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When I received the new Family Toolkit from Ginny in my inbox, I was so excited (full disclosure: I received a free copy of this toolkit in exchange for an honest review). Guys, Ginny’s kind of amazing. She is my go to resource for homeschooling my little gifted ADHD eldest. I love her writing style and her heart, and I had a feeling I was going to love this new resource. I wasn’t disappointed. Choosing Your Child’s Patron saint is an easy-to-use, thorough, and prayerful resource, designed for every family. Here’s a little bit about why I loved it and how our family used it.

The organization

I am all about step by step resources, especially in this busy season of parenting. I also have a soft spot for information that is well organized and follows a clear pattern. Being the nerd I am, after printing out the toolkit, I separated out the sections for Ginny’s 4 steps (easily marked, and headed!) and bound them separately using my handy dandy book binder.

This 4 step set-up let my husband and I work through each section carefully. We spent time each evening over the course of a week, reading, completing the brainstorming pages, and praying with one section at a time. I love how Ginny builds on each section, and my husband was a huge fan of the data based approach. We found each part to be manageable and easy to follow, though certainly not light on the content.

Speaking of content . . .

The Content

This guide is beyond thorough. Step by step, Ginny adds more information at each juncture, slowly letting you build on the data you’re collecting about your child. I love that she has us look at our children through several different lenses- temperament, gifts, areas of struggles, hobbies and interests- I felt like this allowed for a holistic view, which helped our daughter’s patron saints to come into clear view.

We particularly enjoyed pouring over Ginny’s lists of saints based on hobbies and struggles. Mark and I both found several we had not thought of us as potential patrons for our family and children. Not knowing anything about St. Hildegard of Bingen, but reading about her being a renaissance woman, we looked up more about her and now have books of her writings packed away as beach reading for our upcoming vacation because she sounds like a good fit for our eldest.

Opportunity for Prayer and Growth

My very favorite part about this toolkit was the fact that it gave Mark and I an opportunity to sit down to talk and pray together about our children. We had concrete questions to answer and the brainstorming sheets helped us clarify our thoughts and our vision, not only for our kids, but for our family as a whole. Before we even started praying through the 4 steps of discerning our kids’ patron saints, we spent time talking about and praying about our family’s mission statement, which is the first part of the process.

Then to be able to see the common threads that run through our daughter’s gifts, talents, struggles, and predispositions, was amazing. G has always, since she could talk really, had a strong relationship with the saints. She speaks to them as friends, refers to them in conversation, and loves them dearly.

Since she was small (not that she’s so very big at age 4), I have prayed to Teresa of Avila for her and she has had a deep devotion to Therese. As we went through this toolkit, we kept finding more and more reasons why these two saints fit our headstrong, intelligent, creative, amazing daughter- Teresa being the exact one to one match of her temperament and Therese the opposite, Teresa who was a social butterfly, and Therese who was headstrong and had remarkable faith in the Father’s providence.

In short, we loved this toolkit. It has blessed our family richly, and we hope that it will yours.