A Homeschool Journey, Part 10: A New Approach to Learning

It was the beginning of our third year of homeschooling. We had completed kindergarten and first grade with great success (You can read about our second year in Part 9), and I was confident in my ability to teach my own children. I could see the benefits of learning at home for the student, but also for the teacher and, ultimately, the family! The kids were able to spend time together that ordinarily would not have been possible. And I enjoyed being with them, as well. With several children at different ages, I could see the difficulty that could arise once they were all in school. The concept of multi-level learning made a great deal of sense. Rather than having multiple children at different grade levels studying separate topics, we could all learn together as a family. What a concept! Naturally, the older children would dig into a subject more deeply than the younger ones, but the younger kids would learn the topic more thoroughly than they otherwise would as a result of working with their older siblings.

The freedom that homeschooling afforded led me to explore the idea of unit studies. And so began a new approach to school. We invested in the Konos Character Curriculum by Carole Thaxton and Jessica Hulcy and prepared for the year to come. I stapled a laminated timeline to the wall of the long hallway in our mobile home -- BC on one side, a cross above the door at the end, and AD on the other side. To this, we would add characters and events as we learned about them. Konos is a Christian elementary unit study curriculum that teaches Bible, science, social studies, art, music, literature, health and safety, writing composition, and practical living by studying biblical character traits. It is full of hands-on activities that encourage discovery and independent thinking. It also requires a good deal of planning and preparation on the part of the teacher. It is not a curriculum for mothers who want to hand their children text book assignments and be free to do their housework. Konos activities can be messy. But they can be great fun!

Wednesday was "Konos day", when we would do the messy activities. And on those days, we would not work on math, phonics, or spelling. Those were separate subjects that we did the other four days of our school week, along with some less messy Konos-related assignments. Wednesdays were just for the fun stuff! But oh, the things we learned! Even the preschool children could be involved in our school. We were cultivating a curiosity and love of learning in our kids. And before long, they discovered that if they could convince Mom and Dad that something would be "an educational experience", we were all for it! Despite only doing "school work" four days a week, springtime standardized testing proved, once again, that our efforts were succeeding. Our second grader had advanced two more grade levels in aptitude. She was reading beyond a sixth grade level, and the challenge now became one of finding age-appropriate books at her reading level. Our experiment with unit studies was enlightening. Konos had been a success.

Be sure to come back for Part 11 of A Homeschool Journey!