Are you looking for a homemaking curriculum for your girls of all ages?

Check out Polished Cornerstones, Projects for Daughters on the Path to Womanhood! I have been hearing about this curriculum for a while and I’ve been longing to try it out with my own girls. Imagine how happy I was when Doorposts offered to send me a copy to review.

Ok, I have a confession. I actually asked them to send me a copy! I’ve never used my blogger status to try to get free stuff, but this book inspired me to try for the first time. Furthermore, I knew that Homegrown Mom readers might like a shot at a free copy, too, and Doorposts generously agreed to bestow one copy upon a blessed reader.

Here is why you want to win this:
In this massive, spiral bound volume, 52 Characteristics of the Proverbs 31 Woman are taught.

Each of the 52 lessons consists of various suggestions to teach girls how to develop these characteristics at 3 different age levels: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. However, many of the lessons can be combined to include all ages.

Lessons include: Memory verses, Reading selections, Questions to discuss, Scripture passages to read, Projects to do, and more. Several lessons include charts and worksheets to fill in.

I literally wept when I was reviewing this book. To have these qualities laid out to teach, and knowing that I get to be the one to teach them honestly moved me to tears. I am so looking forward to projects, chats over tea, and most of all, digging into God’s Word to see what He says about being a Virtuous Woman.

The author, Pam Forster, recommends planning out one month at a time and choosing from the extensive menu of activities for one lesson. She suggests setting aside a couple of hours a couple times a week. If you do plan one lesson per month, this book will last you years!

I love her idea of planning to answer some of the questions with dad over an ice cream. And guess what? Eric and the girls love it, too! A homemaking curriculum that involves Dad? I know you want it now!

That is what is so unique and cool about this curriculum. At its core, it is about discipling your daughters in the Lord. Along the way, you’ll teach them lots of skills and train them in many areas of homemaking and Godly living, but all of it goes back to God’s Word and spending time with your girls.

The Details:
To enter, leave a comment telling me how many daughters you have. This giveaway will close Saturday, May 21.

The winner will be picked at random.

Get blog updates by RSS feed or email!

Today’s Post is from Courtney

The Proverbs 31 woman was a domestic artist. Proverbs 31:22 says “she makes coverings for her bed.” Did you catch that – she MAKES her coverings.

Well, I’ll be honest – I buy my “coverings” at Target! But I am working my way through a book titled “Polished Cornerstones – Projects for Daughters on the Path to Womanhood”. (Note from Angela: Keep an eye out later today for a giveaway from Polished Cornerstones!) I want to train my daughter to love homemaking. So, yesterday at breakfast we read some of Proverbs 31 and then proceeded to do our morning chores. My daughter makes her own bed everyday but I wanted her to learn to make her bed to the glory of God. To develop her heart towards wanting to make it beautiful – to let making her bed become a work of art.

Sure, it’s not perfect, nor the way I would do it…but she’s a domestic artist in training! And it’s my job to teach her and show her the significance of making her bed.

The Proverbs 31 woman would have spent countless hours making her coverings. It is innate within humans to be drawn toward beauty and so rather than rushing through this rather meaningless task – I challenged her to take her time and make it beautiful to the glory of God!

Genesis 1:27 says man was made in God’s image. Our God has created majestic mountains, beautiful sandy beaches, breathtaking sunsets and from the flowers, to the stars, to the birds and butterflies - all of creation declares God’s artistic nature.

If you have a daughter, encourage her to express herself – to make it a work of art. Teach her to find joy in making her bed. Praise her efforts and diligence. And as mothers, remember to be a role model like the Proverbs 31 woman and make your bed to the glory of God!

Courtney blogs over at Women Living Well. She has been married to her high school sweet heart for 13 years, home schools her son and daughter and is a graduate of the Moody Bible Institute. Her passion to see “Women Living Well” landed her on the Rachael Ray Show in November, 2009. Since then, she blogs regularly about faith, marriage, parenting, and homemaking. In 2010, she started a second website called GoodMorningGirls. There she encourages women to dig into their Bibles daily through tech accountability groups called “Good Morning Girls.”

Get blog updates via email!

Today’s post is from Island Girl

It is the simplest things we forget sometimes or take for granted “everyone knows that” attitude. I am going to teach, or rather attempt to teach how to sew a button. It is not the most glamorous things to teach your tween daughter, but important nonetheless.

First thing you need a button (of course), you need thread either matching and a coordinating color. You need a pair of scissors and a measuring tape if you need it a certain measurement.

You thread the needle and tie a small knot at the opposite end.

When you have this done – hold the button exactly where you want it, start the threaded needle from the underneath of the button on the material. Basically continue this about six times then switch to the other two openings. (some buttons only have two openings if that is so, then go to next step)

After sewing each side of openings when needle is underneath the cloth, tie it off by doing two stitches just on the cloth itself. Cut any extra strings off and you’re done!

All it takes is a little practice and if you get a stitch off here or there. No worries, probably it will go unnoticed and button will stay on just the same!

I would love to hear about your experience with this!

Visit Island Girl

Keep up with this Homemaking for girls series! Subscribe by RSS or get posts in your inbox.

Today’s Post is from Ann Dunagan

It’s kinda a weird title, but as I’ve been praying about what to share with moms and daughters for my “little nugget” for this 30 Days of Homemaking for Girls here on Home Grown Mom, the phrase, “Teach your daughters wailing” has kept coming to my mind:

Is “Wailing for Girls” a Homemaking skill?

Before I begin, I think I need to give you a bit of background about our family.

We’re the Dunagan’s. We’ve got 7 kids (5 boys and 2 girls, currently ages 24, 22, 20, 18, 15, 13, and 10, along with a brand-new 22-year-old daughter-in-law). It seems like we’ve been homeschooling for forever (20 years); yet we’re happy when people still sound surprised that we do! Throughout this time, although we’ve always lived in the United States, we’ve been focused on remote Christian mission work, all over the world.

The other night around the dinner table, my husband and I were asking our kids for some parenting thoughts from their perspectives. Specifically, I wanted some feedback from the kids about what they appreciated about how they were raised.

Now it’s funny how kids can focus on the craziest things.

For some reason, the topic of our conversation immediately drifted to how they all were really proud of the fact that we never had band-aids.

Our beautiful new daughter-in-law just didn’t “get it” as she tried to sweetly explain how reassuring it was for her growing up, to know that whenever she got hurt, her loving mother would always give her a pretty princess-band-aid. But our kids were adamant about how they never appreciated sissy stuff like that; although our newlywed son, reassured his bride that he definitely would have liked those cute little princess-band-aids, on her!

Now, you’d think our kids would appreciate some of the big stuff we’ve done . . . like maybe all those years of education, or all our fun family parties and potlucks, or some cool trip they took around the world. But nope. The one thing that stayed in the forefront of our kids’ appreciation was our silly lack of band-aids.

I’m not talking about wimpy crying . . .

Now, I’ve never even had a boycott on band-aids. It’s just that with 7 kids, our medicine cabinet was often all out of band-aids when they were needed. So we just used hydrogen peroxide, toilet paper or gauze, and packing tape . . . and told ‘em to tough it up.

As I’ve thought about this conversation (because I was genuinely trying to get some parenting feedback, and because I’m always over-thinking deeply about everything), I think this band-aid analogy represents a very different mindset for parenting.

We do love to help hurting people, especially those who desperately need it, but we don’t have a lot of mercy, at least not the kind of “mercy” that registers on those spiritual-gifting tests (the kind of mercy-definition that just naturally delights in giving-away free hand-outs to lazy folks who aren’t willing to excerpt effort). We believe in training our kids to work hard, to be disciplined, and to be able to take care of themselves. We’ve trained our kids to pay for their own cars, to buy their own insurance, and to work for their college tuition (although we did help them with scholarships). They’ve learned that if they’re hungry, they can cook. If they’re out of underwear, they can do laundry.

They know that as a family, we’re all focused together on serving God. Our kids don’t expect to be waited-on hand and foot; instead, they’ve all learned to wait on others. We’ve always trained our sons to be strong, and our daughters to be daring.

Giving our girls something to really cry about . . .

Our family doesn’t care for crying around the house — unless we have something to really cry about. The other day, our competitive 10-year-old started whining-and-crying about losing a game of Monopoly, which resulted in an instant lecture from me about how crying is for real-stuff — like when someone is dying, or a kid is starving, or when we need to repent.

Recently, I found a weird verse that I shared with my daughter. It’s from Jeremiah 9, and in context, the prophet was talking about how horrible it was that Israel had fallen from God’s ways. The nation was dealing with wickedness, deceit, idolatry, and all kinds of evil.

In verses 17-18, the Bible says,

Thus says the LORD of hosts: “Consider and call for the mourning women, that they may come; and send for skillful wailing women, that they may come. Let them make hast and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run with tears, and our eyelids gush with water . . .”

Isn’t that kind of strange? God was calling for the professional criers and the wailing women. There was a need for tears, but a total lack of mourning and grief. Then in verse 20, Jeremiah 9 says,

“Yet hear the word of the LORD, O women, And let your ear receive the word of His mouth; Teach your daughters wailing . . . “

Wow. This verse really stopped me.

I’m a mom with daughters, and I’m always on the lookout for what God tells me to teach my girls. So here, God is saying to teach my girls to cry . . . to shed tears . . . and even to wail. God is talking about big stuff, like rebellion against God, and not caring about sin.

Wailing for the world . . .

As moms, how often do we allow thoughts about the injustices of this world to penetrate into our hearts, to the place where we would care enough to cry? Or care enough to motivate our girlfriends and our daughters? All across the globe, and in our own nation, and right down the street, and (sadly) even blaring into family rooms through televisions and movies, there’s horrible stuff going on.

It’s stuff God calls SIN and INJUSTICE.

Even while living in God’s joy and peace, there should be seasons when the needs of this world should make us so sad, and so shocked, and so ashamed (especially as mothers who deeply care for the next generation). At times, we should be compelled to our knees, where we should cry, and even weep. Yet as women and as moms, most of us are just too calloused . . . or too busy . . . or too tired.

It’s hard enough to just to keep up with our mundane chores and our daily disciplines. We’re tackling unending laundry piles, trying to keep-up with our scrapbooking-goals, and working hard to make our houses look pretty. We’re taking our kids to church . . . and holding our breath through the teenage years, hoping our kids will beat the odds, and turn out okay.

Sisters, I challenge you to a higher calling . . .

Moms, we need to quit striving, and to quit caring so much about what others think . . . about us, and about our homemaking skills, and our motherhood successes (or failures).

Instead, we need to care more about what God thinks. He loves us so much, and He loves our daughters, even more than we do. For both moms and daughters, our calling is to simply walk with Him and to abide in Him, and to follow His leading, day-by-day. As we each draw closer to Him, He will show us His daily divine balance, to keep our family (and for our daughter’s future family) in His order, as He will also show us how to help others.

Please know that I highly esteem marriage, and motherhood, and homemaking. As a life-long, home-based, homeschooling mother, I value the continual investment needed to focus on the needs and priorities of our family and of our children and our home. But I also know that there’s a whole world out there, with so many desperate needs.

Needs that should concern a godly girl . . .

As Christian women (of all ages), we need to allow ourselves to see the big needs of this world, especially those that concern women, and girls, and children . . . like teenage pregnancy, abortion, pornography, the plight of orphan children, child slavery, human trafficking (especially of young girls), hurting and broken hearts, neglected children, and so many unsaved women and lost children who desperately need the love of Jesus.

Many of these are feminine needs that should “pull” on the God-given “nurturing” and life-giving hearts of our daughters. In this next generation, it’s going to take a mighty army of godly daring daughters to minister to these needs. But will our girls even hear about them?

It’s a responsibility of godly motherhood to instill in our girls a heart for the world’s needs (just look at Proverbs 31:8-9, about pleading for the cause of the speechless and those appointed to die, or verse 20, about extending our hands to the poor and the needy). As Bob Pierce prayed, “Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God.”

I’m not trying to put a guilt trip on you, but as women of God, we need to care. Will our girls grow up to be pampered or passionate? Will they be cute, or compassionate? As moms, let’s ask God to give us more of His heart and His perspective. Our little girls don’t need to know all the nitty-gritty details of the world’s horrible evils; but as they’re old enough to understand, we need to teach our daughters to pray, and to pray HARD!

Our daughters can be radiant pure lights . . . to reach a very dark world.

We need to teach our daughters to wail.

Related articles:

Daring Daughters . . . and Dirty Feet Article @ Harvest Ministry
Mission-Minded Compassion Ann Dunagan: Audio @ Harvest Ministry
Women of Courage in a Critical Time Kay Authur: Audio @ Revive Our Hearts

I’d like to end this challenge with a strong excerpt from David Wilkerson, a world impacting minister for over 50 years, who recently died.

Ann Dunagan lives with a passion for the LORD and the lost. She is a homeschooling mother of 7 children (ages 10 to 24), an author, and an international minister alongside her husband, Jon Dunagan.

Today’s post is from Carletta.

As the only daughter of a single working mom, I did not grow up learning to be a good homemaker. I began working in my early teens, and worked right up until the week before my oldest child was born.

Although I wish I’d spent more time preparing to be a wife and mother, I am thankful for the skills I learned while working. The Proverbs 31 woman was also a resourceful and industrious woman who worked with her hands (v13), made profitable investments (v16), and sold handmade goods (v24).

One of my main goals as a mother is to equip my daughter to become a keeper at home. However, I also want her to be prepared to contribute to her family’s income from home, should the need arise.

Here are some ways we can teach our daughters to be industrious.

Encourage an Industrious Spirit

During the early years, we can begin laying a foundation of diligence and resourcefulness that will prepare our daughters to live lives of service. As our daughters help us cook, clean and care for younger siblings, they are learning how to see and meet the needs of others.

While we can and should use the younger years to help our daughters develop marketable skills, we need to remember to place character first. Even if our daughters never become adept at baking or sewing, godly character traits like honesty and respect for others can go a long way towards helping our daughters garner favor in the marketplace and in society at large.

Encourage Your Daughter to See Opportunity

As our daughters mature, we can begin helping them look for opportunities to use their gifts and talents to produce income. Begin by answering the following:

What can my daughter do that others can’t do?
What can my daughter do that others don’t have time to do for themselves?
Where does my daughter excel?
What can she do better than others?
What does my daughter enjoy?

Teenagers who love serving others, may choose to earn money by doing housework, caring for animals, or babysitting. Older teens that are especially responsible can tutor younger children or spend one or two mornings per week serving as mothers’ helpers.

Although service jobs are popular with teenagers, they also have their hidden dangers.

Teens who care for younger children should be well versed in first aid and CPR. In addition, we must be very mindful of our daughters’ safety any time they go into another family’s home. Provide your daughter with a cell phone and code words she can use if she ever feels uncomfortable. Set strict parameters about who she will be with when she is not in your home, and always make sure she has safe transportation to and from the place where she will be working. Also consider using the buddy system or having your daughter care for children in your home so that she’s never left in a vulnerable position.

Teenagers who are creative and crafty may enjoy selling handmade goods. Encourage your daughter to sell handmade soap, jewelry, clothing or decorative items at local craft fairs or online. If your daughter loves cooking, help her package homemade bread and desserts, or start a cake decorating service.

Teens that have artistic or musical talent can give music, art or dance lessons. These skills can also be used to provide services, such as face painting at birthday parties and community festivals, entertainment for weddings and worship services, or photography at parties and sporting events.

Before your daughter pursues any business venture, carefully consider the following:

How much time can you devote to helping your daughter?
Will your daughter need transportation, help making products, or assistance building an online store or website? Will you be available to coach your daughter through challenging situations, and quickly intervene on her behalf, when necessary?
How will your daughter let others know about her product or service?
Teens often feel most comfortable approaching people who love and support them. Encourage your daughter to begin promoting her goods and services to friends and family, before expanding to church members, neighbors and the broader community.

How much will your daughter charge for her product or service?
Ask friends and family members what they pay for similar offerings, or have your daughter conduct a survey to see what her competitors charge. Set the stage for wise business practices by helping your daughter clearly communicate with clients about their expectations. For example, will she be expected to cook and fold laundry while babysitting?

If your daughter has plans to tutor or teach lessons, help her create a simple document outlining policies and payment arrangements.

What can your daughter do with her earnings?

Will your daughter keep her earnings or contribute them to the family? Are there any limits on how she can spend money she earned? Will she be required to pay for specific items, such as clothing or a cell phone bill?

This is a great time to coach your daughter in the area of money management. Discuss tithing, giving, saving and budgeting. Remember, mistakes made in this area can serve as terrific lifelong lessons.

As mothers, we can teach our daughters to be homemakers, while also preparing them to use their God-given gifts and talents to bless their families financially.

How are you teaching your daughter to be industrious, while also encouraging her to keep her heart turned towards home?

Subscribe to Homegrown Mom