Guest Author - Terrie Lynn Bittner

"Perhaps most significant of all classrooms is the classroom of the home. It is in the home that we form our attitudes, our deeply held beliefs. It is in the home that hope is fostered or destroyed. Our homes are the laboratories of our lives. What we do there determines the course of our lives when we leave home." (Thomas S. Monson, “Precious Children, a Gift from God,” Ensign, June 2000, 2)

Over the next five weeks, we will be discussing how to create a house of learning. The first article discusses the joys of creating a learning-rich environment in your home for your children. The second and third articles are an interview with best-selling LDS author Tamra Norton, who read at a fourth grade reading level in high school and failed composition, but went on to be a wonderfully gifted writer. The fourth article discusses life-long learning for parents. The fifth article considers the option of homeschooling LDS children. We are commanded by our Father in Heaven to learn, and to create environments that are conducive to good minds, whether we are learning about the gospel or about our own planet.

Doctrine and Covenants 119: "Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing; and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God;"

Many parents feel that their obligation to teach their children ends the day their children first go off to a church class or preschool. As Latter-day Saints, we understand that the primary responsibility for all things in the raising of our children belongs to us as parents. While the church provides opportunities to hear the teachings and testimonies of others, it is our own teaching and testimony that will usually have the greatest impact on the eternal lives of our children. We can send our children to the very best preschool and grade school, but if they don't see us celebrating knowledge, they may not believe it is worth celebrating.

Creating a house of learning doesn't mean extra hours of workbooks done after school. It means a celebration of knowledge, and celebrating is fun. Do you own a microscope? If you're not picky, an inexpensive one can be purchased at most toy stores or school supply stores. A telescope set up on a balcony or taken on a campout is an easy way to create excitement about astronomy and about some of God's most fascinating creations. Art supplies and creative writing materials
explore the wonders of imagination. A simple walk introduces children to observation skills and curiosity.

A house of learning is one that is filled to overflowing with good books. Learning begins here, with a child curled up in a parent's lap or with children piled under blankets on a big bed, listening to stories and to well-written non-fiction. Later, that learning moves into the real world, as children, on their stomachs, monitor an ant trail with their parents or build a birdhouse in the
backyard. Books take children far into the past, where they can travel with the early Saints across the plains and then let them test this knowledge when they hike in a nearby forest.

Good learning is messy. A prim and always tidy house is seldom a house of learning because you're just not always neat when you are painting a masterpiece, building a block palace or making life-size paper dolls. Little ones are astoundingly messy when they make homemade bread, raise a family of dolls, or create cities made of leaf boundaries. Camping in the living room is
messy and so is making mud pies. Pillow fights break vases and setting the table breaks dishes, but the cost is small compared to the learning and the memories and the clean-up is just more family time.

A house of learning is a joyful place where learning enters not just the brain, but also lodges eternally in the heart. Memories are made in a house of learning and the memories last forever. Create your own house of learning and discover with your children the joys of the knowledge God has tucked away, free for the discovering.