• My Favorites for 0-3 Yrs

  • If you don’t have a plan for your life, someone else does.Anthony Robbins

    Education is a progressive discovery of our ignorance. Will Durant

    For the unlearned, old age is winter; for the learned it is the season of harvest.The Talmud

    You send your child to the schoolmaster, but 'tis the schoolboys who educate him. Ralph Waldo Emerson

    One good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters. George Herbert

    The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without a teacher. Elbert Hubbard

    Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants. John W. Gardner

    Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible. Marion C. Garretty

    Education is not filling a bucket but lighting a fire. William B. Yeats

    The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's time. Sydney J. Harris

    There's nothing that can help you understand your beliefs more than trying to explain them to an inquisitive child. Frank A. Clark

    But, good gracious, you've got to educate him first. You can't expect a boy to be vicious till he's been to a good school. Saki (H. H. Munro)

    Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.Plato

    That best academy, a mother's knee. James Russell Lowell

    My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects. Robert Maynard Hutchins

    If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders. Abigail Van Buren

    I try not to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.Mikhail Baryshnikov

    Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

    Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you’ve never been hurt and live like it’s heaven on Earth.Mark Twain

    The historian is a prophet in reverse.Friedrich von Schlegel

    The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. Sydney J. Harris

    There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million. Walt Streightiff

    Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible -- the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family. Virginia Satir

    It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense. Robert G. Ingersoll

    The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives. Robert Maynard Hutchins

    An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy. Spanish Proverb

    Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. Edward Everett

    Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. John Dewey

    It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. Frederick Douglass

    Education is too important to be left solely to educators. Francis Keppel

    Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you. Robert Fulghum

    The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going.Ralph Waldo Emerson

    The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn. John Lubbock

    To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while. Josh Billings

    I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. Mark Twain

    The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas. George Santayana

    If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.William Blake

    The mother's heart is the child's school-room. Henry Ward Beecher

    Only the curious will learn and only the resolute will overcome the obstacles to learning. The quest quotient has always excited me more than the intelligence quotient. Edmund S. Wilson

    You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself. Galileo Galilei

    Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials. Meryl Streep

    The formative period for building character for eternity is in the nursery. The mother is queen of that realm and sways a scepter more potent than that of kings or priests. Author Unknown

    I am not a teacher; only a fellow traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead--ahead of myself as well as of you. George Bernard Shaw

    Education aims to give you a boost up the ladder of knowledge. Too often, it just gives you a cramp on one of its rungs. Martin H. Fischer

    Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve. Roger Lewin

    Education would be much more effective if its purpose was to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they do not know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it. William Haley

    An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn't teach them how to make a life. Author Unknown

    [Education] consists mainly in what we have unlearned. Mark Twain

    We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.Chuck Palahniuk

    It is little short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not already completely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry... I believe that one could even deprive a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness if one could force it with a whip to eat continuously whether it were hungry or not... Albert Einstein

  • My Favorites for Ages 3-6

  • My Favorites for Ages 6-9

  • My Favorites For Ages 9-12

  • My Favorites for Ages 12-14

  • My Homeschool Library

  • I’ve Gotten Awesome Family Deals Here

July 23, 2010

Feature Films for Families

On our last family trip, I grabbed some movies I had been keeping hidden in my drawer. Made by Feature Films for Families (FFF), these shows consistently deliver engaging stories with strong, moral values and correct principles.

I enjoy watching them with my children and discussing the events and dilemmas they present.

I found our first FFF movies at a yard sale. I brought them home and my kids really enjoyed watching them. I started keeping my eyes open for the brand and found more at thrift stores. I liked how they had a summary of the story on the video cover, along with suggested questions for family discussion.

After we finished residency and Mike got a “real” job, I ordered a few movies directly from Feature Films For Families. I had never paid full price for a movie before that, since I was used to getting ours at yard sales, but I wanted to support a company that was creating wholesome entertainment.

I’ve long been dissatisfied with the appropriateness of what’s coming out of Hollywood. For a long time we didn’t go to the movie theater more than once a year. We didn’t feel there was much worth watching or spending our money on. As we started to have kids, it seemed even harder to find shows we felt were appropriate for them, not to mention inspiring.

As I collected and watched FFF movies I realized they were appropriate entertainment for our family, and they were also inspiring us and building our characters. This was the type of educational material I searched for when we made the decision to home school our children.

It wasn’t enough anymore for something to not be “bad.”  If we were going to spend our money and time on media, I wanted it to build us, help us learn the difference between right and wrong and motivate us to be better people.

Every year or two since, I have bought another batch of movies for our family. From time to time, outside media does capture our attention, especially as my kids get older. I’ve been getting lots of movies and classic shows from Netflix.

Sometimes my kids aren’t as interested in watching our FFF movies. In order to beat the competition, I just plan to put one on when not much else is going on.  Family trips in the car are perfect opportunities. Not only are my children a captive audience, but my husband and I can hear the story and talk about it when it’s over.

Most these movies are available for $12.95 on the Feature Films for Families website. Amazon has many for $5 including shipping from individual sellers. (Click on the DVD pictures if you want to read about them.)

It’s easy to be passive about media. If we are aware of how much our children learn (good or bad) through this medium, we as parents can be proactive in using this powerful tool to reinforce the principles we’re trying to teach at home.

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One Comment

  1. We love FFFs. I didn’t know there there so many out there, though, that we haven’t seen. Thanks for the insight.

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