July Habits

I purchased this book at the homeschool convention this year and love it! I plan on using this book throughout the first years for all our children.

Charlotte Mason says that decency and propriety habits are the habits that in a sense make us. They are the habits that we do without thinking. Also, they are the habits that people judge us by. The ones that she elaborated the most on are: Cleanliness, Courtesy, Kindness, Manners, Modesty and Purity, Neatness, Order, Regularity. Others include: Candor, Courage, Diligence, Fortitude, Generosity, Gentleness, Meekness, Patience, Respect for Other People, Temperance, and Thrift. I would have to agree with her. In general when someone says "so what did you think about so & so" I tend to think back on things like how they acted when I was with them (their friendliness, manners, in all how they presented themselves).

The other habits I want to work this year are moral habits. Which are: Integrity, Obedience, Personal Initiative, Reverence, Self-Control, Even Temper, Truthfulness, and Usefulness. These moral habits are so important to me and I want these buried as deep as possible inside of our children. I feel that these are the habits that will help them to be open to hear and be used by God, a good husband, and a good father.

I decided to divide them up and concentrate on two a month. The book gives application for each. We will be using that and I will be checking out books from library and/or using what we have to reinforce and give different perspectives on each habit. In addition, our whole family will be concentrating on how where we can improve in each of these habits.

Our two for July that we have started on are Cleanliness & Integrity. I will be posting at the end of the month on what we did and how it went.