Starting Points – Part 1

Marissa and I just finished!! We don’t take the summer off so I don’t know why I am so excited, but we did finish our Starting Points curriculum. As first year homeschoolers, learning to de-school and keep organized and how to learn (and teach) without the benefit of a classroom lecture, we have relied on this curriculum to structure the “school” part of our day.

I loved this curriculum! Our school year started with an intense Bible study. I don’t know about your church, but our Youth group is very seeker oriented. Fun activities designed to attract media-saturated teens are planned to get teens to church so that they can hear, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for you life.” I loved walking through this study with Marissa, answering her questions and learning that, despite her learning difficulties, she is very interested in the things of God, confused by nominal Christians that don’t walk in the light and really struggling to understand what it means to be a Christian in today’s complex culture.

The only problem I had using the program is that there are several large writing assignments. Marissa is not a strong writer so I re-wrote the objectives. The first assignment required Marissa to write a personal statement of her worldview. Creating a personal worldview required Marissa to think at a higher level than what had been expected from her in public school. She was used to demonstrating “learning” by memorizing and regurgitating facts on a multiple choice test. I didn’t “dumb down” this application level objective, but I did alter the activity. Instead of an essay, Marissa wrote expanded paragraphs and then created a scrapbook page that illustrated the idea with pictures.

This study led both Marissa and I to line up our thinking with the Biblical truths that:

• God is infinite, personal, loving and good.
• The universe was created by God and consists of both visible (material) and invisible (spiritual) portions. 
• Fallen man is depraved and has a bent toward sin.
• Moral choices are based on the character and nature of God and not on man’s natural inclinations.
• The soul of man exists eternally either in heaven or in eternal punishment.
• Evil and suffering are caused by sin and rebellion against God’s created order.
• History is a meaningful sequence of events that is predetermined by God and being sovereignly worked out to fulfill God’s ultimate goal.