We just plugged this week’s numbers into the random number generator and found out that our week two Amazon card goes to Kim at Heart Shaped Hedges. Congrats Kim! Please keep contributing. Any comments left from this point on will get entered into next week’s drawing.
Thanks for your good input. Please continue to share the word about our project. We hope you all have a great weekend.
There is much to process here by all the great input you have given. There will be more questions to come after we synthesize the current answers a little more, but in the meantime, is there anything you wish could be discussed about this topic and in this forum? Please post your questions here and we’ll include them in the next round.
I’m viewing those of you who are contributing as a “focus-group” of sorts, and your thoughts have been very valuable to us. We hope you will continue to stick with us over the coming days.
The week 2 drawing is coming up tomorrow afternoon, so please leave your thoughts on the any of the previous questions you haven’t already.
Thanks!
I’m hearing most of you say that you don’t really “do” current events with your kids because they are too young and the exposure to mainstream news is too harsh for them.
If something were developed that enabled you to begin introducing current events with your kids in a way that meshed with your biblical beliefs and values, what would that look like?
Do you not “use” a program/curriculum for this because there really isn’t one, or would you still not use one if one did exist?
In a post below, Anne references the curriculum she uses (Omnibus) as helping her teach/model biblical discernment to her kids:
We look at what the book we’re studying is saying and what the culture is saying about the particular topic, and then we take that to our final authority, Scripture. This has become a pattern in our home that we can apply to movies, tv commercials, etc.
We’d like to hear more about how you approach discussing current events and pop culture with your kids (both home and in classrooms). Is there something specific you intentionally do to bring the discussion around to biblical worldview thinking? Does the discussion just pop up after reading a magazine article or watching an advertisement on television? What does that look like in your environment?
A pastor was giving the children’s message during church. For this part of the service, he would gather all the children around him and give a brief lesson before dismissing them for children’s church.
On this particular Sunday, he was using squirrels for an object lesson on industry and preparation. He started out by saying, “I’m going to describe something, and I want you to raise your hand when you know what it is.” The children nodded eagerly.
“This thing lives in trees (pause) and eats nuts (pause)…” No hands went up. “And it is gray (pause) and has a long bushy tail (pause)…” The children were looking at each other, but still no hands raised. “And it jumps from branch to branch (pause) and chatters and flips its tail when it’s excited (pause)…”
Finally one little boy tentatively raised his hand. The pastor breathed a sigh of relief and called on him. “Well,” said the boy, “I *know* the answer must be Jesus … but it sure sounds like a squirrel to me!”
I’ve become increasingly aware that my parenting/educational perspective can come more from moralism than a biblical worldview. In an effort to correct this, I sometimes “over-God” everything by making practically everything I say have a reference to the truth that God allowed for it, God created it, God is aware of it.
How do you approach teaching kids that, “whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31)? What does math look like when taught from a biblical worldview? How about science? art? music? How do you avoid the “squirrel scenario”?
We just did the drawing for the $50 Amazon gift certificate for week one. Everyone who participated got assigned a number to their name for each post he or she left a comment on (ie: if you left three comments, your name got assigned three different numbers). Those numbers were plugged into the random number generator which choose the winner for us.
The winner for this week is Kristen from This Classical Life. Thanks to everyone for a great beginning to our research on biblical worldview and education. We’re looking forward to another good week of your participation, with the second drawing coming at the end of next week.
Please keep the comments coming!
We’re loving the responses we’ve received so far to our questions. Thanks for your faithfulness to participate as you have. It’s been great reading your many thoughts.
We are wondering, though, if we have any men in the house who care to chime in? Also, are there any Christian school teachers out there in the blogosphere who would join our discussion? If you know of any, would you kindly point them in the direction of this project? We realize they teach during the day (we have one here who does) and may not have time to check in on blogs at school, but the weekend is approaching and we could use their input.
Our first week’s drawing is coming up soon. Be sure to throw your $0.02 in on any of the questions you haven’t already. Also, any links to the site are greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Okay, let’s make “biblical worldview” less of a concept and more of an actuality. Is biblical worldview something you teach or something that gets caught?
If the former (something you teach), how do you do that? If the latter (something that gets caught more than taught), what does that look like?
Interpretations of “biblical worldview” seem to vary greatly among people, Christians included. Teaching biblical worldview can range from a detailed curriculum explaining all of the -ologies, to Christianized versions of public school textbooks (1+2=Jesus), to the belief that being a Christian means you will simply live and act a certain way. Is the concept of “biblical worldview” in the classroom more of a buzzword than a reality?
We’re encouraged by the 1,000+ visits we’ve had in just two days of being “open for business.” We hope this is a sign of things to come and hope that those of you who helped make up that 1,000+ will let your voice be heard in the comments.
We’ve heard from several of you that you are excited to see where this project goes, yet you aren’t sure what you have to contribute, or you think anything you have to say has already been said. Be assured that we want to hear it again. We need to hear it again. We want to know what you do, what you think and eventually, what you need. So please speak up and add your $0.02 to the total.
Yesterday we got started by talking a bit about some of what actually happens in current educational contexts. Today we’d like to hear some about ideals. If you could arrange the perfect educational situation for your kids/students, how would you describe that? Are you currently experiencing that situation? If not, what would need to change in order to make a move in that direction?
Education lends itself to ideals that may or may not be realized on a daily basis. I myself make a very detailed schedule at the beginning of each school year that quickly tanks in favor of daily survival, yet I continue to set the ideal for myself, for my kids each year hoping that this will be The Year.
Leaving the ideals to the side for now, what things actually get taught in your teaching situation? If you are not in the dominant teaching role, what do you perceive to be the daily reality of education for your own kids or for most of the kids you are familiar with?
Don’t worry – it’s not like a government census. We would like to know some facts about you to later tie them your responses when we begin to pull the information together.
It is not mandatory to register to participate, but if you wouldn’t mind, would you share as much demographic information about yourself as you are comfortable? You do not need to do that here on the blog (unless you want to). If you’d care to tell us about yourself privately, send an email to howkidsthink@gwnews.com with the following information:
You’ll get an entry into this week’s drawing for registering, so let’s go!
Welcome again and thanks for participating in the How Kids Think project. This project will reform itself over the next two months as we get feedback on what you think, what you use, what you need. Your participation is vital to the process.
We think your participation is so important that every week we will give away a $50 Amazon gift card to one of you. To be entered for the drawings, you need to participate in that week’s discussions. There will be new questions throughout the week, and for each question you answer, you’ll get your name added to the drawing. (If we ask five questions this week and you answer three of them, your name will go in the “hat” three times, and so on.)
You may comment as often as you wish on any of the questions (and we’d love to have you discussing with each other, so please feel free to do that), but you will only receive one entry per post that you participate on. The drawings will be held at the end of the week following that week’s discussions.
Now then, let’s get started!
Thanks for visiting the How Kids Think blog. How Kids Think is a project of God’s World Publications, the publisher of God’s World News and WORLD Magazine. We hope you’ll bookmark us and visit often over the next two months to participate in our research of what it means to teach children from a biblical worldview in a postmodern world.
Please check out the tabs above for detailed information about the project, the events, and the people involved. We’ve scheduled our first live event for St. Louis, MO, and you can read all about it here (watch for more to come soon). In the meantime, leave a comment and say hello.
