So you are about to undertake your maiden voyage into home-school waters.  Here are some tips for smooth sailing …

1. Home schooling, like everything else in our lives, must spring from a foundation of God’s grace .  And strengthening our understanding and gratefulness for that grace is always His sovereign plan in whatever He calls us to – even home schooling.  Remember that, and tell your kids.  This is the greatest lesson your family will learn through home schooling. 

2. How do we cultivate a deeper understanding and heart of gratefulness?   By preaching the gospel to ourselves and our kids daily. 

•  Start each day with a reminder that you have a great need for a Savior;  you have a great need for a relationship with a heavenly father; but our sinfulness has disqualified us.  We don’t deserve to have this great need met.  Nor is there anything we can ever do to deserve or earn the right to be in a relationship with God.
• Our situation is quite desperate.  Home schooling will certainly accentuate this. 
• A sense of our desperation is a good thing. It will  increase our gratefulness and humility in view of what God has done for us.
• He has provided that Savior for us.  Everyday of our lives we glorify Him by acknowledging to our kids, the world and ourselves our desperate plight, and our gratefulness for the mercy He has shown us.

3. Our humility and gratefulness will position us to receive God’s continuing grace and favor for our home school and family life.

Make the Gospel central in your home school life – right from the beginning.  Evaluate your foundation often.  I know a whole lot about home schooling in my own strength.  I put a lot of confidence in my talents, my background, and my own energy in getting things done.  But you know what happened…?