Hannah's Award Winning Sonnet

Hannah entered into HSLDA's annual national poetry contest. She won second place. Here's the poem:

God's Wonders

I hate to think of those who've never felt
The dusty earth beneath their unshod feet,
Who've never on the banks of rivers knelt,
To feel its cool and watch its surface pleat.
I hate to think of those who've never known
The sun's warm kiss upon their heads and necks,
Who've never held a summer rose half blown,
Or felt a fuzzy chick's dear gentle pecks.
These people sit inside their gloomy homes,
And stare at gloomy pictures on the wall.
Although they may own palaces and domes,
They speak of naught but waiting for God's call.

God's wonders, placed with halls so dark and grave,
Do seem to me as king beside the knave.

A Quote by David Bently Hart

I ran into this quote this morning as I was reading Doug Phillip's blog. Tell us your thoughts.

Probably the most subversive and effective strategy we might undertake would be one of militant fecundity: abundant, relentless, exuberant, and defiant childbearing. Given the reluctance of modern men and women to be fruitful and multiply, it would not be difficult, surely, for the devout to accomplish—in no more than a generation or two—a demographic revolution. Such a course is quite radical, admittedly, and contrary to the spirit of the age, but that is rather the point, after all. It would mean often forgoing certain material advantages, and forfeiting a great deal of our leisure; it would often prove difficult to sustain a two-career family or to be certain of a lavish retirement. But if it is a war we want, we should not recoil from sacrifice.1

More on Exercise

Our family exercise has morphed again. Here's the new wrinkle: the Tabata protocol. The what? Google the word Tabata and you'll find references to some Japanese guys, and more specifically a Dr. Tabata. He is an exercise researcher who discovered that doing very intense exercise for 20 seconds then a 10 second rest, then another blast of intensity for 20 seconds followed by 10 seconds of rest. Do it for eight rounds. That's only four minutes of exercise.

Some typical exercises done with the protocol are squats, pushups, and pullups. In the Lieberman family, we haven't tried the pullups yet. But we do the squats on a regular basis. We also do burpees and bear crawls. I'm not the first one to say it, but I'll repeat it. "Twenty seconds never seemed so long, and ten seconds never seemed so short." It is sheer agony by the fifth and sixth rounds. So why do them? The results are spectacular. No equipment required. And the time commitment is short.

For us the squats are the most intense, then burpees and finally bear crawls. By the way bear crawls are when you move around on your hands and feet without touching your knees to the floor.

Try it out and tell us what you think.

Home Fitness

It's been a challenge for me to learn how to help my children stay physically fit. I have struggled with my weight all of my adult life and found it difficult to keep an exercise commitment. So one year ago, at the ripe age of 43, in fear and trepidation, I joined a gym. I was inspired by hearing about the success of a man my age who had dropped 40 lbs in about six months. I worked out at the gym faithfully for nearly a year then I quit. Because I found something which is working better for my family and me.

First of all the trips to the gym took precious time away from my family on a regular basis. Also, I don't really like exercising with all of those other people particularly women. I wanted to do something different.

Whenever I embark on a project like this I usually do a lot of research. The whole area of health is difficult to research because everyone is selling something, so you have to weed through a lot of stuff to get to what works. I read several books, did hours and hours of online research, I even fell for some faddish stuff, but finally have settled on a combination of things that work very well for my family.

The first part of the combination is a book called The Navy SEAL Workout by Mark De Lisle. This book's apparent goal is to give a set of exercises which done over time, trains the individual to get fit enough to join the Navy SEALs. One reason I liked this idea is that the Navy SEALs have a reputation for building very strong men without a lot of expensive equipment. I bought the book and started using these exercises and quickly realized that I was getting a better workout doing these body weight exercises than from all of the expensive equipment at the gym. The only equipment piece needed for this workout is a place to do pullups. Now in terms of getting a person ready for the SEALs, I cannot vouch, but my fitness is definetly improving. On a side note, I think there are better Navy Seal Workout books on the market, but this one has a workout plan that we can actually do. I think The Complete Guide to Navy SEAL Fitness by Stewart Smith is great, but it is too intense for us at this point.

The key thing is I can do these exercises with my children. My seven through thirteen year old all join in on the "torture." I am seeing strength and physique gains in my children.

Another piece is a system of working out that I found at the suggestion of a church member. The system is called crossFit. Though I don't approve of everything that Crossfit posts on their website, over all I find that I like their concept of fitness. Anything they do, I need to scale back considerably to make it doable for me. Still, I have gained, particularly from their work out of the day or WOD. They post them five days a week. I don't often do the WOD, but I learn from it. I have learned a lot of new exercises which are all very intense. Most of these I don't do with my children, but as they get older, I expect to start springing it on them.

I am curious what you have done to help keep your family fit. What has worked for you?

Testing

Just testing, guys.
Larry

Hey Art can you read this, thanks David

Ok this is my first attempt at posting ....hope to see you all very soon in Texas !

God bless, David

Offense

Here's a great article on the liberal notion of tolerance.

David Barton's article An Historical Perspective on a Muslim Being Sworn into Congress on the Koran

I just finished reading the article entitled An Historical Perspective on a Muslim Being Sworn into Congress on the Koran by David Barton. This is a PDF file and will take a couple of minutes to load on dialup. Read it. I like Barton's balanced approach to this problem. He views the swearing in as being problematic but does a great job of putting it perspective and provides excellent historical information in the bargain.

One of the points he makes is that the world has far more to fear from secularists being in power than muslims. He give statistics which show that secularists murdered more people in one century than all of the other sects did in the previous twenty centuries!

As I wrote about this in a different forum several weeks ago, I conjectured that this swearing in will ruffle many an evangelical's feathers. They'll go to and fro huffing and puffing about it not realizing that they gave up battle a long time ago. They really didn't fight it. And the way they did it was by agreeing to the general philosphy of pragmatism. Rather than arguing from scriptural precepts. They argued from natural law.

Do we see Elijah or the prophets giving pragmatic arguments? (Well if you consider that to not obey God's law will bring his curses on you, your nation, and family, it sounds pragmatic to me!) And don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that pragmatics aren't ever considered. Of course they are. But are they really a standard for ethics? No. Why? Because who ever holds the sword or the wallet gets to define what is pragmatic. Whoever can woo the public for five minutes defines it.

God's law rules the day weather we acknowledge it or not.

Read his Word. Learn it. Live it. Love Him. Share it.

This article by Barton is worthy of using during your family time, using it over a few evenings.

I would love to know what you think of it.

Lessons Learned From Years of Homeschooling

Lessons Leared from Years of Homeschooling is a blog sponsored by Chalcedon.edu. Some thought provoking thoughts on today's blog entitled "Standing on Your Own Two Feet." Many of us entered the homeschooling model because we thought it was the best way to prepare our children to meet the world's challenges. Then, after a while in the "room", we realized that God had called us to something very different than what we had envisioned.

The Christian Almanac by George Grant

The Christian Almanac This is the link to the Amazon website for the book I discussed in the former post.

I would love to hear about what ya'll are doing in you family worship times. Please provide as much detail as possible. What books do you use? What kinds of activities do you do? Do you sing? How often do you do it? What have been the challenges to your doing a family time? What resources would like to have which you haven't been able to find?

Please answer these or other questions about a family worship time.

Family Time

Our family has recently discovered George Grant's Christian Almanac. We are using it during our evening family time. The book is arranged by date with a this-day-in-history format. It also has a through-the-bible-in-a-year feature. We are enjoying it and learning a lot of history.

What are you doing for family time? If you only have adults in your home, do you still do family time? Does it look different?

As The Twig is Bent- A poem

As The Twig Is Bent
A.V. C.
2006

As the twig is bent
So grows the tree
'Tis said of the child .
O, How grows thy seed?

How will you ensure
Their moral fibers strong
That there be no question
In matters right and wrong?

Cords of Truth to anchor,
Tied by Steadfast Hand
Straightright yielding fruit
In crooked twisted land.

Not left to find its way,
But bent to glorify
This sure, chief end in store,
Their Maker to glorify.

Welcome!

To introduce: Homeschooling Dads is a blog in which several homeschooling dads will discuss things. We will discuss the things that are on our minds from politics to poetry, specifically with a hard lean toward biblical worldview. We are not professional theologians but more typical things like contractor, salesman, entrepreneur, postmaster, and parole officer. We are between the ages of forty and sixty. Some of us have all adult children, some with no adult children and some of us have a mixture of school-age children and adults. The largest of our families is fifteen children--the smallest three. There is not a chance that we will agree in everything which we discuss, but I expect that we will find a lot of commonality. I hope that we will challenge each other and readers too, always keeping in mind Christian charity. May the Lord bless this blog and be glorified in it!