Besides introducing your kids to Jesus Christ, feeding them nutritious food, and providing them with clothing and shelter, providing your kids with a high quality education is one of the most valuable things you can do for them. Hands down, homeschooling is one of the best ways to do that.

What better way is there to pass on the heritage and traditions of your family than to include your children in the daily life of the home? To work together? To learn together? (Every teacher knows that you learn best what you teach.)

Watching your children learn at your feet is like watching them learn to walk, over and over again. The first halting step, with support, is a good effort. Then comes learning to wobble along, one uncertain and unsteady step at a time.

But before you know it, your child is off running and playing joyfully: the reader you have to pull away from his book for chore time; the math whiz who can do things in his head that you would need a calculator for; the writer who concocts surprisingly creative stories; the historian who can give impromptu lectures on the battles of the American Revolution; the artist who can quickly sketch amazingly life-like portraits.

Homeschooling at its best is a time of wonder, adventure, and excitement—for both the student and the teacher!

But sometimes, you might question if all this book learning is really preparing your child for the real world.

Are there other critical subjects you can apply this sense of wonder to?

Are there ways you can channel the passion of learning to prepare your child for the day when hard times do come?

What about a green thumb who knows how to stretch a budget by growing his own food and who could feed his own family some day if the supermarket shelves were empty?

What about an accomplished young cook who can strengthen social bonds with delicious meals during the good times and make anything taste good during the lean times?

Even better, what about a little lay theologian who sees the direct connection between Scripture and the practicalities of daily life and knows that whatever trials may come, this world is not his home?

Take this saying of Jesus, from the Gospel of John: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”

Have you ever pruned a grapevine? Do you really know what Jesus is talking about? Wouldn’t this parable make more intuitive sense to your child if you planted a grapevine together, watched it grow, learned to care for it through the seasons, and enjoyed its fruit?

The Bible is full of practical images like this—at least, they were practical to the original audiences! But in our modern age, we’ve become detached from the soil. We might have theoretical, second-or-third-hand knowledge about things like grapevines and sheep, but rarely any direct experience.

Is it possible to turn this situation around? Is it possible for children in the modern era to understand what children of the Biblical era knew directly? Is it possible to grow book knowledge and practical skills all while developing a deeper, richer understanding of our Creator and Redeemer God?

We think it is.