My husband and I both grew up in christian households. Both of our parents did their best to raise us with Christian values, to seek the Lord first and to live above reproach. I grew up in a Reformed Presbyterian Church and faith to me was very heady and knowledge-based. Relationship with Jesus became more personal to me when I took my first trip overseas when I was 17, and then when I branched into a non-denominational church in college. At that church I was discipled by people who knew how loved they were by God and modeled relationship with Jesus where He was clearly a friend. This was also my first experience in a body of believers who modeled walking in the gifts of the Spirit. My husband and I went to this church in our early marriage and while doing a discipleship school there we felt called to join a church planting/ discipleship-based team in Nepal and India. We were on that team for three years, and at the end of it, we felt like we were striving and doing what we knew was good, but not living out of our belovedness as God’s children. We sought some counsel and prayed about next steps and whether to continue overseas, and we felt like God was leading us to plant roots and to strengthen our marriage and family unity. Since then, we’ve been going back to the basics of simplicity and devotion to Jesus and wanting to model for our kids what it looks like to love the Lord with all your heart soul and mind and to walk in obedience to his voice wherever we go.

I love how Saints Classical is rooted in faith and seems like a beautiful community of families who are seeking the Lord in how to disciple and educate our children. I loved the quote you shared about how what children dig for themselves they retain forever. This has been our experience with our kids, that they have so much joy and excitement in pursuing subjects that interest them instead of us following a rigid curriculum. We’ve wanted to be in a homeschool community where faith is central and where a love of learning is fostered.

We try to model for our kids a dependence on Jesus and the joy of friendship with Him. I love to start my day reading the Bible and journaling, and inviting my kids to join me (sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t). We love to worship together and sometimes we will go through a devotional together or read stories from a children’s Bible. We pray with our kids throughout the day and we pray over them at night. But more than any system or habit we do, we want our kids to feel a joy and comfort in their personal relationship with Jesus and for Him to be their source. Which for us looks like leaning on Jesus, talking to Him throughout the day with thankfulness and whenever we need wisdom, comfort or direction.

We would love for our kids to grow in friendships, in taking initiative with learning and in serving others. I liked what you had shared at the information night about having the school “houses” and the kids taking turns leading chapel time, giving the kids opportunity to grow in leadership and in their gifts. Our hope for our kids in their educational environment is that their character is also developed and challenged. We do want our kids to value a strong mind, but we also hope that they will grow into their unique gifts and strengths and be strong encouragers of their fellow classmates and friends.

After being solely homeschooled from K-9th grade, I attended a Christian, Classical tutorial/homeschool academy from 10th-12th grade, and enjoyed how a classical education brings back a tried and true educational perspective of exercising the mind with sound thinking and reasoning and asking questions. I personally loved Latin and how it helped grow my vocabulary and understanding of words. I also valued the classic “great books”we read that I otherwise wouldn’t have been introduced to. I appreciate that a Christian classical education can ignite a love of learning and growing in wisdom, character and a strong spirit. I think a strength of classical learning is helping kids learn to ask important questions and develop sound critical thinking skills.

We don’t necessarily have any labeled parenting philosophy; we just want our kids to love Jesus more than anything and we want to “raise up our children in the way they should go so that when they are old they will not depart from it.” Part of the reason why we felt it was important to reset after a few years overseas was seeing some of our own triggers come out in our parenting and wanting to address any underlying wounds or unhealthy patterns so that we can give our kids our best as their parents without falling into reactive parenting. We want our kids to know how loved they are by us, but more importantly by God and for that to be their biggest motivator in living as sons and daughters of the King of Kings.