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The Enduring Appeal of The Pilgrim’s Progress

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Pilgrim's Progress in a field
Journey is the primary motif of Pilgrim’s Progress.

In most of the world, the Bible is the only book that has been more widely read than The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. This classic allegory of the Christian life has appeared in over four thousand English-language editions and has been translated into scores of other languages. Generation after generation, people have found blessing and help in its pages. Why all this popularity, and what does it mean for you and your homeschool family? Is this 339-year-old story relevant to you and your kids?

The Power of a Well-Told Story

Everyone enjoys a story, and the story of Christian’s journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City communicates truth in a powerful and memorable way. There are interesting characters, lively conversations, new places, and dramatic scenes.

When it was written in 1678, The Pilgrim’s Progress depicted characters and events that felt realistic to readers of the time. To modern readers, the people and places in the book have an old-fashioned, almost fairytale feel to them. Yet the events of this allegory still reveal timeless truths about salvation, right living, and the importance of staying on the path of faith.

The Wording and Language of The Pilgrim’s Progress

Bunyan was a man of the people. Most of his positive characters are commoners, and he wrote in a relaxed conversational style, using the informal, lively language of rural common folk in seventeenth-century England. However, the wording of the book is dramatically different from the conversational language of today. For this reason and others, we recommend The Pilgrim’s Progress for high-school students, especially those in tenth grade and above.

Encourage your teens to have a dictionary or smartphone handy so they can look up the meanings of difficult words or antiquated phrases. BJU Press offers a helpful Teacher’s Guide that has marginal notes, vocabulary information, and discussion questions to help you teach the book effectively. If you’d like to introduce the story to younger children, you can find excellent abridged or adapted versions to use until they are ready for the real thing. One well-loved children’s version is Dangerous Journey, retold by Oliver Hunkin and beautifully illustrated.

The Different Types of Believers

There’s an interesting inclusivity in The Pilgrim’s Progress, which allows for the different Christian life experiences believers may have. As a pastor and a close observer of individuals, Bunyan gave his three main characters—Christian, Faithful, and Hopeful—different weaknesses, unique strengths, and a variety of experiences. As you study the book together during your homeschool sessions, your children may be able to see their own traits and tendencies reflected in the characters.

The Role of the Allegory

From an educational perspective, The Pilgrim’s Progress is important in the development of literary genres. It’s an allegory, not a novel or fable; but the characters and narrative make it an important forerunner of the novel. Bunyan made his major characters and many of his minor characters both lifelike and varied. Thus, The Pilgrim’s Progress has great value as a literary work as well as a realistic story that expounds themes of salvation, temptation, the Christian’s armor, and the benefits of Christian fellowship.

Are you ready to dive into The Pilgrim’s Progress as part of your homeschool? Study it along with your high school students so you can benefit from the literary and spiritual enrichment as well!

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Rebecca is a work-at-home freelance writer, novelist, wife, and the mom of two bright-eyed little ones. She credits her success in writing and her love of books to her own mom, who homeschooled three kids from pre-K through high school.

4 Holiday Activities for the Homeschool Family

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holiday activities
The holiday season is the perfect time to bring your whole family together for fun activities. And you certainly get bonus points if those activities are educational or even result in homemade, inexpensive gifts! So, here’s a list of four enjoyable holiday activities that teach teamwork, truth, or both in the context of Christmastime.

Hot Chocolate Stir Sticks

from The Unlikely Homeschool

The Unlikely Homeschool shares a super-easy and delicious activity that your whole family will love—hot chocolate stir sticks! These tasty treats are also ideal when you need some inexpensive gifts for friends and family members. Get the ingredient list and instructions on the blog, and remember to scroll down to the bottom of the page for more great holiday ideas!

A Christmas Carol Literature Unit

from Confessions of a Homeschooler

Are you looking to incorporate holiday-themed tales into your kids’ literature studies? The helpful blog Confessions of a Homeschooler describes how to do a literature unit on A Christmas Carol, complete with beautiful printable mini-books and comprehension questions. There’s even a video tutorial for creating the flip-up pocket lapbook to hold the story timeline and mini-books. The unit is adaptable for Grades 1–5.

Bottle-Cap Animal Craft

from The Homeschool Scientist

The Homeschool Scientist brings the holiday cheer to your science lovers with a delightful Christmas animal craft made with bottle caps. The free printable includes three colorful animals; there’s a link to an online tutorial that shows how to do it. Teach the kids about each kind of animal and its tracks while you’re creating keyrings, bag tags, or zipper pulls!

A Christmas Hymn Study

from Not Consumed

Homeschool blog NotConsumed.com brings us back to the lessons learned by hymnists gone before us in Still Singing: Hymn Stories for Every Season. This study will introduce your family to the histories of many of your favorite hymns, including Christmas carols.  Learn the origins of over 20 hymns, in addition to four Christmas songs: “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” “Silent Night,” “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentleman,” and “Joy to the World.”

Looking for more Christmas crafts and activities? Try the four simple Christmas crafts at Life of a Homeschool Mom, or try making the suncatcher nativity scene from Peace Creek on the Prairie. Your Christmas season doesn’t have to be filled with a new activity every day. But when you keep it simple and highlight the true reason for Christmas, you create memories that last a lifetime.

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Rebecca is a work-at-home freelance writer, novelist, wife, and the mom of two bright-eyed little ones. She credits her success in writing and her love of books to her own mom, who homeschooled three kids from pre-K through high school.

A Default Setting of Gratitude

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learning gratitude

Have you ever had to change your phone back to its default settings? Usually this happens when you’ve used and filled your phone to the point that it begins to malfunction; a reset to default settings often fixes whatever hiccups or problems it may have picked up. Remove all the extra noise and clutter of your customizations, and you restore the phone to a state of greater digital purity.

What if we took time to reset the focus of our hearts—a way to return to a default setting of renewed thinking and greater gratitude?

The Slide into Self-Pity

Left to itself, even a redeemed heart tends to drift towards self-pity and complaining. When it comes to giving thanks, it is easy to rehearse the good things—health, family, provisions. Yet too often we fail to express gratitude because our minds are taken up with the people and situations that trouble us.

To change our default setting to gratitude, we need to begin by thanking God for the things that bother us, not just the ones that we enjoy. Tough situations are often God’s gifts to reveal and change some unsanctified part of our hearts.

Sinking or Swimming?

One summer I was particularly unhappy with God because He prevented me from participating in the Christian camp where I longed to work. Instead, He gave me the opportunity to teach preschoolers how to swim. Day after day, under the scorching Phoenix sun, I was trying to get screaming toddlers to enjoy blowing bubbles and putting their faces in cold water.

Torn between their fear of the water and their desire for independence and control, they would push away, thrash around, or clamp onto me—even pinching me with their little toes. After a lesson or two, they had relaxed a bit and were delighted to let me bounce them around while I made motorboat noises or pretended to be a human washing machine. Eventually they learned that swimming lessons were great fun, that the water would hold them up, and that I would not let them drown.

Week after week, God gave me new students who screamed and cried and pinched. Finally I realized that God was trying to show me what I looked like to Him. I had my heart set on a specific ministry that was not open to me. I could continue my adult version of the toddler tantrum, or I could relax and trust Him to teach me how to stay afloat and actually enjoy the ministry He had given me.

The Bigger Plan

Once I understood that, I was able to identify with the children and thank God for them. They were showing me what I looked like as well as giving me insight into God Himself. I, a relative stranger, wanted to teach these kids the skills they needed to survive, and I wanted them to enjoy themselves too. Would God my Father want any less for me? So I surrendered my anger and went back to a default setting of thankfulness.

During the time I was working in aquatics, I renewed all my certifications as a Red Cross instructor for swimming, lifeguarding, CPR, and first aid. Later, those credentials gained me a place of ministry for the entire next decade at the very camp where I had wanted to work that summer.

God’s ways are above ours. We may never understand His methods, but we can always trust His motives. To reset and refresh our hearts, we have to clear out the clutter of busyness, worry, and self-pity. It’s time to go back and fix our minds on God’s truth and rest in a state of gratitude.

Several Bible studies published by JourneyForth are about topics Esther mentions in this post. Check out No Matter What You Can Rejoice, A Life Surrendered, and Refresh Our Hearts.

The Thankful Spot

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Celebrating our blessings on a special day is a wonderful thing to do, but how do we teach our children to be grateful every day? How do we train them to see God’s hand in the little blessings as well as the big ones? Check out this Thanksgiving activity that offers weeks of thankfulness and fun for the whole family. It helps children develop an attitude of gratitude—and grownups may find it refreshing too!

1. Find a Thankful Spot

Remember how Winnie the Pooh had a “Thoughtful Spot”? Well, it’s time to find your family’s Thankful Spot! Is there an area of your home that everyone can view easily? Perhaps the refrigerator door, a wall near the front door, or the bathroom mirror? You could even use each bedroom door as the owner’s personal thankful spot.

2. Create Thankfulness Pages

Feel free to design your own pages, or use our handy printable “Days of Thankfulness.” You’ll need one copy for each person in your home. At the top of the “Days of Thankfulness” page, ask each child to write his or her name and the number of days till Thanksgiving.

3. Display the Pages

Now you’re ready to post the pages in your Thankful Spot. Younger children may have trouble writing on the paper while it is posted vertically on the wall, so you’ll need some way to remove the lists easily each day. Consider using painter’s tape to attach the lists to a door or wall, or use push pins to affix them to a bulletin board or cork board.

4. Add to Your Lists Daily

Remind everyone in the family to write something in one of the blank spaces on his or her list each day. For the first day, ask your kids if they can think of someone special in their lives, someone they’re thankful for. On the second day, they can write down something they like to eat. The third day, prompt them to think about a kind of technology that is useful or enjoyable. There are thirty items on the list, enough for a whole month—but you can keep the fun and thankfulness going as long as you like!

5. Set Aside Time to Be Thankful

Every day—at whatever time of day works best for your family—take a few minutes for everyone to share what (or who) you’re grateful for. Then pray together, expressing your gratitutde to God. You could do this every morning before you begin your homeschool day; or if mornings are too hectic, you could visit your Thankful Spot during lunch break, at suppertime, or in the evening before bed.

Explore Other Creative Ways to Be Thankful

There are other fun ways to stay mindful of all the great things God has given! You can make a paper tree and tape it to the wall in your homeschool classroom. Every day, have your children write some things they’re thankful for on colorful paper leaves, and tape those leaves to the tree branches.

You can also teach the letters of the alphabet and their sounds while being thankful! On the first day, ask your kids to think of something they are thankful for that begins with the letter A. Continue with a new letter each day until you reach Thanksgiving!

Even the littlest blessings are God saying “I love you” to His children. As you help your children find a new “thankful” every day, remember to seize those teachable moments to tell them more about the One who loves them best of all.

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Rebecca is a work-at-home freelance writer, novelist, wife, and the mom of two bright-eyed little ones. She credits her success in writing and her love of books to her own mom, who homeschooled three kids from pre-K through high school.

Truth in Action: Biographies that Teach Principles

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Biographies
Most homeschool parents realize the value of using biographies as a teaching tool to complement what their kids are learning. By reading biographies, your child can gain a much better understanding of how the people of a specific time period walked, talked, dressed, worked, and played; however, there is another important use for biographies—the teaching or reinforcement of Christian principles. As Jonathan Edwards put it, “There are two ways of representing and recommending true religion and virtue to the world—the one, by doctrine and precept; the other, instance and example.”

Biographies in Your Homeschool

While your child is reading about a particular historical era in Heritage Studies, introduce a book about one of the notable figures of that time. The biography might be about a Christian statesman or a missionary who served during that era. A biography of a notable scientist, such as Madame Curie, might pair well with your child’s studies in chemistry. A book about a brilliant Christian mathematician might inspire your child to strive for excellence in algebra.

Homeschool families can use biographies to reinforce their teaching of the Bible on almost any grade level. For example, if the child is reading in Acts about the missionary journeys of Paul, he can read some stories from the lives of famous missionaries including William Carey, Adoniram Judson, or John and Betty Stam.

The Popular Biography

To keep the kids engaged, it’s a good idea to choose “popular biographies” close to their grade level. These biographies draw information from reliable secondary sources and then dramatize the stories a bit with description and dialogue. A popular biography is designed to be a story about real-life events, rather than a report.

One example of a popular biography is With Daring Faith by Rebecca Davis. This book, written for children ages nine to twelve, focuses on a central theme—the faith that spurred Amy Carmichael to serve on the mission field of India. The biography handles Amy’s rescue of enslaved children with delicacy so that children can become familiar with the story and learn from it at an age-appropriate level. Another biography for the middle grades is Mary Slessor: Missionary Mother about the tough Scottish missionary to Africa. For younger readers (ages seven to nine), consider These Are My People about the life of Gladys Aylward

The Fictionalized Biography

Fictionalized biographies center on genuine historical figures but include fictional characters and dialogue. The Hawk That Dare Not Hunt by Day by Scott O’Dell is a work of historical fiction about the life of William Tyndale suitable for teens.

The Critical Biography

Another kind of biography is the critical biography. The book doesn’t necessarily criticize its subject; the term critical means that the work is based on original sources such as letters, papers, or interviews and contains scholarly citations. A critical biography concentrates on presenting all aspects of its subject, good and bad. Parents and teen homeschoolers can enjoy reading and discussing critical biographies such as Merle d’Aubigné’s The Triumph of Truth: A Life of Martin Luther.

Fill up your family library with informational books as well as good fiction, and add in some quality Christian biographies. Stories of faith in action will provide your students with real-life illustrations of scriptural truth.

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Rebecca is a work-at-home freelance writer, novelist, wife, and the mom of two bright-eyed little ones. She credits her success in writing and her love of books to her own mom, who homeschooled three kids from pre-K through high school.