Home Education

Our family is one that home schools, or if you prefer to put it this way, we are home educators. I suppose you could say that we do school at home but that would actually not be quite accurate. We don't do school in the traditional sense. My children have very few work books. Most of our time is spent sitting on the couch reading books together. While my children are not constantly doing 'busy work', it is amazing to me how much they retain from the living books we read together.

The curriculum we have chosen to use for the time being is Sonlight. There have been times when we've seriously considered doing other programs but we always come back to Sonlight.

Mr. Beaver and I have attended numerous home school conventions, we have read extensively on the subject, and we have been privileged to learn from veteran home educators. Based on this research and on our own experiences thus far, we have come to the conclusion that for us, home schooling is not an activity we watch our children do or that we merely do with our children, home education is a way of life for our family. Every day we have an opportunity to learn things together as a family.

I plan to blog more about our journey as lifelong learners. Buckle your seat belts and get ready for an exciting ride!

What's With the Title?

You may have been wondering why I would have called my blog Coney's Crevice. What's a coney and what is it doing in a crevice?

In the King James Version of the Bible Proverbs 30:26 reads as follows: "The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks".

I am not a mighty, powerful person. I am definitely not on any "who's who" list :-) My job is not glamourous neither do I have spectacular titles. I am an ordinary wife and mother but I serve a great King. Even though I am weak, I am strong in Christ. Conies aren't strong, yet they build their homes in rocks.

One of my favourite hymns is "A Wonderful Saviour is Jesus my Lord.....He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock...." Another word for "cleft" is "crevice"; hence the title "Coney's Crevice."

I found the following definition of coney, a.k.a. hyrax on thefreedictionary.com

Noun

1.

hyrax - any of several small ungulate mammals of Africa and Asia with rodent-like incisors and feet with hooflike toes cony, das, dassie, coney eutherian, eutherian mammal, placental, placental mammal - mammals having a placenta; all mammals except monotremes and marsupials family Procaviidae, Procaviidae - includes all recent members of the order Hyracoidea Procavia capensis, rock hyrax, rock rabbit - hyrax that lives in rocky areas

Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2008 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.

What Matters

When all the smoke clears or when your life becomes uncluttered;

When push comes to shove or when the rubber hits the road;

When you've reached the end of yourself or when the crisis is over;

When the argument is done and you know that nobody has changed their views but each have become more firmly entrenched in their own ideas;

You realize that what matters is:

Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength

and your neighbour as yourself.

Let Jesus be your all in all and do the next right thing.

In the World but not of the World

Because of various things going on in my life, I find my creative well has dried up for now. However, the last few days, I have been very encouraged by the blogs of others and would like to share one of those with you today.

I frequently read the blog of Tim Challies: http://www.challies.com

His "a la carte" posts give many links to interesting sites. Sometimes a post will stop me in my tracks and cause me to think deeply and re-evaluate my established thoughts and world view. Other times a post will as it were 'say my thoughts out loud'. The following post did the latter for me today.

Check it out and see what you think.

http://mrlauterbach.typepad.com/gospeldrivenlife/2011/03/parallel-universes.html

Becoming familiar with Blogging

Hmmm, yesterday I typed the sermon notes out in a "new post" so I wouldn't forget the sermon I heard but then I hit "publish post" accidentally. I was supposed to check it over and then publish it today, oh well. I am slowly getting the hang of this blogging business....:-)

Obedience

Have you ever noticed that the word obedience has the word die in the middle?

obeDIEnce

Our pastor brought this to our attention on this Lord's Day morning. In the life of sanctification the Christian dies to sin and obeys Christ.

We let go of something in order to serve our Lord more fully. Something needs to die, needs to give, needs to be put off, in order to put Christ on. That something is sin which stands between us and the Lord.

In Philippians 1 we read how Paul longed to be with Christ, which he said was far better. Our pastor also used a ship to illustrate his point: when we die, we are like a ship which sails out of a harbour. The ropes which have tied the ship to the shore are loosened one by one. When a believer dies, his ties to sin are loosened. Therefor, it is far better to be with the Lord than to be constantly sinning here.

Here are some of the thoughts I have from hearing that sermon this morning:

This definitely puts a new perspective on death, doesn't it? Now we can understand why Paul thought it would be far better to be with the Lord than to keep living here on earth.

However, Paul did not die at that time. The Lord still had work for him to do. The reason why Christians here are still alive is because the Lord still has work for us to do.

What work has He given you and given to me? Are we doing it or are we being distracted?

True Riches

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."

-Jim Elliot

Introducing the Cast of the Crevice

I am Lidia. You should be finding out more about me as the days/weeks wear on, 'nuff said.

The rest of the cast have been given aliases for privacy reasons.

My better half is Mr. Beaver, a man of outstanding character, who helped pick his alias. The name comes from the Chronicles of Narnia.

Our oldest child is Elnora. Her name is derived from the books by Gene Stratton Porter. The Elnora of Porter's imagination loved nature and in particular insects. Our Elnora is no different.

Our second child is Bob, named for Bob the Builder. He likes tools, obviously.

Bill is our third child. For some reason when the boys play construction, farm, or any other imaginary games, this child usually calls himself Bill. So Bill he is.

Lucy is our fourth child. Lucy is a sweet name, and child number four is sweet. (So are our other children, we think, and no, of course we are not biased.)