Character Building For Families 
Here is a typical scenario in my house: One of my sons decides he wants to make “shooting sounds” with his mouth while he is drawing his civil war scene. My youngest daughter who is also at the table drawing gets annoyed with her brother and starts to tell him he needs to stop making that noise. Ahh, now my son has realized he can now tease his sister with this annoying noise he is making. So my daughter now gets even more annoyed and decides to hit him. My son of course retaliates and now my daughter finds me in the other room and tattles on him. Does this sound familiar to anyone here?
When we were having days like this I knew I needed to find something that can teach my children how to love each other on a daily basis! We needed some character training. My wonderful friend told me about a curriculum she was using with her children that was just for character training.
I am sure every child will need some guidance in character traits such as obedience, cheerfulness or truthfulness. I know in my house all of my children have needed some extra guidance in character building. Let’s face it all of us can use some character building.
As I said through a wonderful friend I found this wonderful curriculum called “Character Building For Families.” It is published by Full Gospel Family Publications. It is a bible study designed for the whole family which focuses on character training. I am sure one of the reasons most of us have chosen to homeschool is to have more time to develop those Godly character traits we want our children to have.
Let me tell how the curriculum is laid out. It is a topical unit study of christian character traits. There are two volumes that can be purchased. The first volume covers 12 traits; obedience, orderliness, diligence, loyalty, deference, cheerfulness, gentleness, contentment, gratitude, truthfulness, servanthood, and hospitality (I am sure many of you are now thinking my children could use guidance in one or more of these traits). There are 165 lessons. In volume two there are five topics covered; stewardship (of money, time, speech, bodies, friends and the gospel), teachableness, mercy, patience, and desire for Jesus. There are 135 lessons. The traits can be done in any order. We had started with gentleness because at the time it was the most needed trait that our children needed to learn. Each character trait is broken down into daily lessons. A single trait may have as many 14 lessons. Each lesson starts with a biblical passage to read. Each day there is bible memorization. The verses to be memorized are to help cement those daily lessons of each trait being taught. There is discussion about the bible passage that is read and how it can be applied to our lives today. Sometimes the lesson may ask Mom and dad to give examples in the own lives of how to apply a lesson. The lessons have questions for you to ask your children. Each lesson ends with prayer and the lesson gives suggestion of how to pray for that day. It is a simple layout but a very effective one. It demonstrates how God has shown himself through his word and how he wants us to be like Jesus.
What are the cons? It may be a little advance for younger children such as 2nd grade and lower and there are not any pictures.
This curriculum was a great fit for our family. It is so easy to implement into your homeschool day. The lessons generally take 20 minutes. We’ve have had some great discussions in our daily bible lesson with this curriculum. This is a great bible curriculum that is easy to teach and so effective. No preparation is needed. The only material needed is a bible. We did keep a bible journal. My children would write our bible verses that we were memorizing and they would journal their thoughts about what they had learned in our bible study. That was something extra we added to the program.
It is very affordable, the cost is only $15.00 for each volume or $28.00 for both volumes. Here is a link if you would like more info:
This link shows examples of the program:
Written by Korey
Thanks for sharing this great resource! I am always looking for ways to build character into my children, and have found that simply implementing it with our Bible time works the best!
.-= Stephanie´s last blog ..Catching My Breath =-.
Korey,
Is this something you could use out of order? If you needed to cover a certain character issue one week that needed to be addressed, would you recommend buying the set if I wanted to use it in this way?
Brenda
.-= Brenda´s last blog ..Have you heard about Eeboo? =-.
Yes, you can do the character traits out of order. If your children need a little help with cheerfulness then do that trait first. I love that you can do the traits out of order.
Korey