This year we have been doing My Father's World - Creation to Greeks. I have loved using MFW the last few years, but this year I have definitely tweaked things more than in the past.
For quite awhile now I have been eyeballing Konos. For those of you that haven't heard of Konos, they are the granddaddy of unit studies (according to their site). It is a unit study curriculum that uses character traits as their topic and as their site states, they cover....
elementary science, literature, history, Bible, arts/crafts, music, writing, drama, geography, social studies, health/safety, character, critical thinking, and practical living. ** excluding math, spelling, upper grammar.
I had the chance to buy all 3 original volumes, the timeline characters, timeline wallchart, the Compass Book (this is like the How to use Konos Book) and the Index used, so I did. Don't you just love getting new curriculum, it feels like the Holiday!
My only hang up so far, is that Konos is not done chronologically for Bible and History. I have read that the timeline really helps solve this problem but I just haven't settled it in my mind, Know what I'm sayin'.
After opening up our new curriculum for NEXT year, I decided to do the unthinkable. If you are thinking, No she didn't, I have to tell ya, yes she did! We started Konos. Yes sir ree, with about a month left of school I am starting something totally new, pretty crazy right. : )
Part of me just wanted to try Konos, as is, to see what I thought. I have been wondering if I still want to follow the MFW's Rome to Reformation timeline next year and just pull in from Konos or do just Konos alone. Not really sure yet, still mulling all the over.
Here is what I do know, we had a great week. We started a new chore system this week, called Children's Miracle Music (I will be reviewing this shortly and have a coupon code for ya'll). My house has been CLEAN, all week and it has been WONDERFUL! Usually our living areas are kept up pretty well, but the girl's room generally looks like a tornado has gone thru it, twice! I always tell the girls that for my health I do not like to even look in their room, looking in there makes my blood pressure rise 50 points. Really!
As far as school goes, we started Konos. For the next few weeks we plan to study Attentiveness. Here are some of the highlights of our week and the Attentiveness Study :
- For Bible we studied Elijah and Elisha (per MFW) and read in the Victor's Journey Through the Bible (love this books BTW)
- The kids and I studied the ear. We read about the ear and then the kids made model of the ear out of my kitchen table, they had a great time!
- We read about Helen Keller and Louis Braille.
- We read the biblical account of Samuel and saw how he was attentive to God's voice.
- We learned the meaning of Attentiveness.
- We talked about 15 different jobs that require people to be attentive, like a babysitter, a surgeon, firefighter, etc...
- We listened to some classical music, included Mr. Beethoven Lives Upstairs.
- We talked about ways that we can be Attentive to the Lord and how Christ was attentive to the Father.
- The girls both finished their spelling books for the year and started memorizing poems.
- We finished up our memory work on Psalm 1.
- For PE they rode bikes, and jumped and jumped and jumped on the trampoline
- For independent reading one of the girls is reading about Corrie Ten Boom and the other is reading a Boxcar Children Book, I have them tell me about (narrate).
- As a fun book we also read The Cat in the Hat's book about money - 1 Cent, 2 Cent, Old Cent, New Cent which was a very cute yet informative little book that the kids and I enjoyed.
- We also read about instruments and an orchestra.
- To finish out the week, tomorrow we are going to play Simon Says , watch The Miracle Worker which is about Helen Keller's life and hang up our new timeline wall chart. I think that we are even going to put up all the Bible people that we have studied this year and review them as we hang them.
Like I said, we had a really good week. Next week we are going to continue with our attentiveness study and focus more on musicians and sight.
Here are the books that we read from this week...
Did anyone else decide to switch up their curriculum at the end of the school year, just wondering ?
3 comments:
For our first three years of homeschooling, I changed things up frequently in my search for what worked best for us. I'll be interested to see what you think of KONOS; that was one of the things we tried and, while I thought it was very creative, it wasn't a great fit for me personally.
I made a phonics switch mid-year this year, but the programs were nearly identical. I am very glad we made that switch...
I'm glad you had a good first week with KONOS. I used that growing up and am using it with my boys now. It is referred to as the 'granddaddy of unit studies', because most of the other unit studies out there (MFW, TOG for example) were KONOS users who decided to then go write their own unit study program... When KONOS first started there wasn't much else out there besides Christian school textbooks.
I loved our timeline. It gave me an incredible mental picture and helped me out immensely in college. I would picture our timeline in my mind and place the event I was being asked about and could pretty much always narrow down the right decade! It was also exciting to see how people from different fields (explorers, inventors, musicians, major wars, etc) all fit together in time.
I will say that I enjoyed going back thru history chronologically in highschool.
I hope you have fun trying it out and are able to determine if it will be a good fit for your family!
We used KONOS the first 3 years of our homeschooling. The attentiveness unit was one of my favorites. The kids loved making the ear. The explorers and settlers units were my favorites.
Best Wishes w/ your switch!
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