Creativity: An "image of God" trait.

One of the main themes in Love in the House (1 of 5) is creativity, what Wendy and I call “an image-of-God trait.” Creativity separates us from animals. Our shelter, our food, our choices–they all require creativity. No other creature on earth can create anything, only humans can. This is what makes us unique, created in the image of God.

Cynthia, Lydia and I spent some time in California with the Stout family. Marie was last week’s director for the Concordia Challenge (what was the largest homeschool speech & debate tournament in history). We arrived a couple days early and observed a bit of their homeschool. I was intrigued with Don’s weekly labs in his garage. See, Don is a patent attorney with two science degrees, so he and his boys–along with a few homeschoolers in the neighborhood–spend one morning a week to “do lab.”

I doubt he followed a formal science curriculum, and if he did, he steered his own course while just dabbling in it. Don loves science, and he creatively worked a lab into his busy schedule. He and his boys would wake up early once a week for lab, and Don made sure he scheduled a late arrival to the office that day. What fun!

The 16 hour drive home gave me time to think through a lot of things. I wake every morning with my boys to read Scripture, something we’ve been doing fairly consistently since August. We cover a chapter and talk about it. A great way to start the day. The boys and I then straighten up the house and make breakfast, waking the rest of the family to get the day started.

Now, creativity takes creativity, not conformity. I’m not a science guy like Don, and it would have been awkward for me to announce a weekly lab with my kids. (What happened to Dad? the kids would wonder.) I am an English teacher, a publisher, an editor and writer. Lab experiments wouldn’t go over well for me, but sentence structure, grammar and usage–whoa, baby, now we’re talking!

Time is also an issue. I’m a very busy guy. I barely am able to squeeze in the Bible lesson and breakfast with the family. How can I squeeze in language arts lessons? This is the weight I’m supposed to be carrying in our homeschool, and I hate to admit it, I’ve been a pretty lame teacher lately.

Tension. Time versus responsibility. Perfect breeding grounds for creativity. We read Matthew 21 this morning, and after a short discussion about Jesus praying, eating, sharing, buying, we launched a short lesson on suffixes and verb tense.

And we really got into it! I drew columns on notepaper and talked about the five verb tenses. Even I got a little confused, so we did a few Internet searches on the spot, discovered 12 verb tenses, and focused on the four “present” tenses, whipping up a lesson on these. As we whipped up eggs and bacon for a big breakfast, we talked about helping verbs and the ever-so slight differences between the four present tenses, bringing all sorts of examples into the discussion. The boys’ sisters woke up and heard us gabbing about “present perfect progressive” tenses, asking questions and stimulating more discussion.

This is what homeschool should be like, fully taking advantage of parent-child opportunities, spending time together and naturally working through the details of education. It reminds me of Deuteronomy 6:7, a favorite verse among homeschoolers, about teaching the laws of God: “Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”

Or when you’re making breakfast. Or in the garage before heading to the office. You fill in the blank: when is the best time for you to press on your children the valuable lessons in education and spiritual growth?

I’m chalking up a daily activity for the kids and me. We’ll “do English” before heading to the office.

Wendy and I saw Sherlock Holmes. An interesting theme wove throughout: fear clouds our thinking, fear allows evil to triumph, and fear justifies the most hideous behaviors. Of course, Sherlock overcomes his fears (wincing just a little) and solves the mystery in the end. The diabolical plot of the bad guys almost succeeded, solely because of how fearful people could become.

We constantly come up against fear when speaking with couples and their decision to have children, or not to have them. Though God is pounding on their hearts to have another child–or even their first one–they come up with all sorts of reasons not to. All of the reasons are based in fear: fear of poverty, fear of the unknown, fear of change, fear of vulnerability and even love.

Parenthood is one of the greatest adventures in life, and couples rob themselves of the experience because of fear. The fear sometimes appears rational, as couples (typically the liberal, yuppie types) cite some college professor’s dissertation on why not to have children. They appear to cling to “reason.” Dig a little deeper, and their reasons are still based on fear. Overpopulation, harm to the environment, economic instability–all doom-and-gloom intellectual dispositions. These couples actually believe they are doing the world a favor by not having children, or at least having just one or two.

With a little bit of research and thought, we find these “reasons” to be extremely unreasonable. They’re laughable, really. While some look at our life with 15 children as “crazy,” it is difficult for us to look the DINK (double-income, no-kid) advocate in the eye without busting out laughing at their ridiculous ideas. Here are a few.

• The world is overpopulated already.
• Human beings harm the environment.
• The economy cannot bear a growing population.

These are the popular mindsets, and our educational system constantly drills these fears into our society. This is one of the biggest reasons we choose to home school. I taught as a public school teacher from 1993 to 2000, and I saw little more than worldview indoctrination in many classrooms. It appears that little has changed since then. A relative (bless her heart) bought my children all sorts of popular magazines for our children. The old classics, like Ranger Rick, could barely turn a page without ranting about the evils of CO2 or global warming. The magazines would come in the mail and very quickly get discarded into the trash.

Fear, fear, fear. No wonder parents don’t want to bring children into this falling, crumbling world? Even professing Christians fall for this nonsense. I’ve been in Bible studies with God-fearing men whose knees shake at the prospect of having children. “Why?” I ask them, and they answer some fear-based gibberish about the end of the world coming soon. More fear, and from the very people who should be fearless!

There are signs this ignorant tide is turning. Yesterday’s issue of Blue Book Report, the online news site that posts daily articles on the debate topic of environmental policy, posted an article about Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski’s attempt to block the EPA’s regulation of CO2. It is insane to think that an unelected executive department of government is attempting to regulate the very gas human beings exhale. In America, no less. What gives them such unlimited power? Fear of climate change, global warming, environmental damage. Never mind the scientific challenges to such fuzzy claims, just think of Al Gore’s claims of world devastation (be afraid!) and you will see the reasoning behind such political power.

Hollywood’s traditional Sherlock Holmes, the one with pipe in mouth and intellectual correction of Watson, looked to science as the solution for everything. This isn’t entirely true with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation. Fear is the reason for crime’s success, for the prevalence of frenzy and falsehood, in the true Sherlock Holmes. In the recent rendition, Hollywood gets it right this time.

“The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession.”

~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Valley of Fear

This is the start of Cynthia's extemp box: a collection of articles to help master current events.

Cynthia and Lydia are away from the family this weekend at the first Region 3 Speech & Debate Qualifier in Salt Lake City. Breaks were announced this morning, and both girls did well. Cynthia broke in all her limited-prep events (Impromptu, Extemp and Apologetics) and Lydia broke in Original Oratory. They are watching and flowing the next round of debate, and will be heading into semi-final speech rounds later this morning.

Wish I were there on this final day of the tournament. I plan to fly out to Salt Lake on Monday to meet the girls at the airport. We then are driving an additional 11 hours to Irvine, California, for the first Stoa Open Tournament (Stoa is a new home-school forensics league). The girls will compete again, and I will have a vendor’s table with speech & debate supplies available to the 400+ student registrants and their families. We’re looking forward to this!

Speech and debate has become the “sport” for home educators. I often ask parents, “Who were the jocks when you were in high school?” Typical answer: football, hockey, basketball players. In the home-school movement the jocks are debaters and competitive speakers. It is encouraging to see academically focused students as the “cool” kids in their social circles.

Are you interested? Our publishing company, Monument Publishing, is the leading publisher of curriculum and sourcebooks for the home-school leagues. We’re running a special on “Complete Preparation Bundles,” intended for those home-school students who want to jump right in and get going. Tournaments are happening across the country, and the Complete Preparation Bundles are exactly what you need to compete. Check out our new Google calendar here to connect with a tournament in your region.

And I’ll let you in on an exclusive coupon that we sent out with all our midseason orders on January 2: the “no brainer” coupon. With any order over $20, you can get $10 off. Simply type in the code “nobrainer” and $10 will be dropped from your final bill. The coupon is aptly named: it is a no-brainer.

I’ll post later with results. Go at it, Cynthia and Lydia!

Wendy and I got a really good email yesterday, and we spent some time this morning writing up an answer for our FAQ section. (We let the kids sleep in this morning because they’re staying up till midnight tonight!) Here is the question (edited slightly):

We have four children and when we are asked if we “plan” to have more and I give some kind of general answer like “I would love to” or “I am open to it.” We get many comments like jokes or even people shaking their finger at us, shaming us. It can be very difficult. How do you handle it?

Short answer? We ignore them. But we have a lot to say on this, so we created a new FAQ on it. Read it here.

Well, I’ve been tweeting for a few months now. Social networking is interesting stuff. Though it can suck your time away, it is a great way to stay in touch with loved ones.

So, Wendy just signed up for Twitter and is going to give it a try. She has 0 followers as of 10:30 on Dec. 30. Click on the following to follow:

www.twitter.com/wendyjeub
www.twitter.com/chrisjeub

We had our traditional Christmas Eve service in our living room. We read from Luke 2, finish reading Jotham’s Journey, the kids present gifts to Jesus (several colored pictures and impromptu speeches), and we open our “Thankful” ornament. Gifts to Jesus consisted mostly of colored pictures and impromptu speeches, but Tabitha and Lydia read very thoughtful poems they wrote to the family. I’m sure Jesus was pleased. Our “Thankful” ornament is a box with jots from everyone’s thankful blessings of the previous year. We started this tradition in 1991. It took an entire hour to read through the 18 years of thankfulness, plus go through the entire family to write down 2009’s blessings (every child has a line items).

It’s now 11:36 p.m. Not too bad. Wendy and I have set up all the presents, stuffed the stockings, hung new candy canes on the tree. Strict orders: no waking Mom and Dad up before 6:30, but the kids can unload their stockings when they wake up.

Probably our best Christmas ornament ever!

Those who think the Jeub kids are deprived, they don't know what they're talking about.

Stockings stuffing consists of fruit, candy, a new ornament, and a wrapped gift.

We have nearly 100 Christmas letters taped up...we'll start reading them after New Years over breakfast every morning.

Gotta love this music video. I watched on the Hugh Hewitt blog and thought I’d pass it onto you. I sure wish I had more time to post on the political climate of today. So much of it is anti-family, anti-business, anti-American. Something on the Franz’s website caught my attention: “In a world of dark uncertainties and monopolized ambitions, there is still something that touches the soul. Music.” This video certainly keeps my perspective in line…