Wanna Be a Steader!

Here's something you have probably not thought of doing...how about a field trip to a funeral home?!

I am in no way trying to be morbid here, but I think you will find that it will be one of the most interesting AND beneficial field trips your Jr/Sr high students will ever take. As many of you know, we consider life skills as a major part of our homeschool. One of the topics in a unit study that we use as a loose outline covers the topic of ‘being prepared in all circumstances.’ Unfortunately, as we live in a fallen world, death is a part of life. When we were a young married couple Ty & I lost our darling 3 month old daughter, Jessica, to SIDS and we were faced with all the frightening, ‘must be done NOW,’ heartbreaking decisions that encompassed arranging a funeral…as we were only in our mid-20’s, neither of us had ever been involved in preparing a funeral for a loved one. As we are not promised tomorrow, we didn’t want our daughters to be completely in the dark as to what is involved in the funeral process, as we were.

Two years ago, when Jasper was a Senior, we covered this topic and I arranged a funeral home tour. I thought it was a great idea to not only have them familiar with the whole funeral planning process, but to even take out the fear, apprehension and mystery of what happens to our loved ones during the whole process of preparation and preservation. In our case, our 'tour guide' was our pastor who is a funeral director/embalmer, and as a Christian, he gives wonderful perspective of the service of a funeral director as a ministry and service to the surrounding community. If AT ALL POSSIBLE, I recommend that you find a committed Christian funeral home director to lead your tour.

On our tour we covered the whole process: coordinating the service, picking out caskets/urns, cremation, embalming, pricing, how funerals are held for different religions and lifestyles, and Joe usually touches on the difference in how Christian and non-Christian families grieve; burying the homeless, aftercare for the family, pre-arranging...and even some humor! A high-light is that the teens can ask ANY questions that they like…there are no silly questions!! This was great because they could lose any misguided information or frightening imaginations that they may have gotten in a very non-threatening way. And chances are, if you are wondering about something, someone else is, too.

PLEASE CONSIDER YOUR CHILDREN’S AGES…this may only be appropriate for the teens in your family; YOU be the judge. Actaully, I would say that some of the parents were the most interested in going on this field trip and took their teens with them! lol But everyone benefitted.

Blessings from Ohio, Kim Wolf<><

A Seldom Thought of Field Trip

Interesting field trip

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