It’s arrived in our shop! Another new title I know many of you will be super-happy to see!! 🙂
Yes, it’s a set of teaching posters with notes!
Often when I’ve looked at character education taught from a Christian perspective over the years of homeschooling our family, I’ve not seen many products which are very appealing to me. This is because most products have lots of words and explanations or activities to repeat over and over or be presented very intentionally with a lot of thought or drill.
I prefer quicker-to-read stuff because I’m a busy mom (of 8) with many things going on around me every day. I’m also someone who likes teaching with fun visuals.
Sometimes in our home, I’ve hung up cute posters originally made for public classrooms, but those can look overly large in a place with limited wall space. And they only show a handful of character traits. And they are missing very relevant Bible verses. And there is nothing much for a child to “do” with those but look at them. (I’d like something for my kids to enjoy colouring for some of these sorts of topics.)
So for “character education”, we have tended to focus more so on simply living out Biblical principles with verbal reminders from time to time, rather than an organized curriculum. You can see my comments further about this here on “Our Twist on Teaching the Bible and Character Education“.
I was raised by vibrant Christian parents who taught me very well with lots of love. But I also realize that my background is not everyone’s background. So I wanted to make a resource that would organize important values to supplement our family’s learning of these concepts plus be a blessing to parents and teachers who also are looking for a more visual resource to help them with teaching their children.
At first, portions of this new product was put into an e-book curriculum published a few months ago – My First Social Studies. But as I was doing that, I thought it would be a good idea to grab the character education portion from that title and expand that into a multi-grade resource as well, adding full-colour posters.
Another feature about this product is that I’m not focusing my attention on being overly habitual about having good character traits. (So I don’t suggest any drills.) I believe it’s very important to know what is right and good compared to what kind of behaviour is not good – that is my main “why” I teach my children the traits of good character. As a Christian mom, I come from the perspective that no amount of habit training will ever make any child (or adult) “good enough” before God.
Romans 8:1-15 and Galatians 5:16-23 explain that the goodness that God is pleased with comes from living life in the power of God’s Spirit working in us. And that there is freedom in a person’s life, rather than a dullness and burden of trying to obey laws and principles with our own efforts.
So, to me, this is a “sweet and refreshing” resource – to be used either to supplement a curriculum you already like or as a stand-alone resource to help you show, in a simple and effective way, what is “good”!
I hope you like this set of teaching posters and notes! 😊
