After much prayer and consideration, and a nudge from a good friend, I think I've f i n a l l y got my curriculum for next year figured out. I think.
For those of you that don't know, we have been using My Father's World for the last 3 years. For some reason I was not really crazy about Creation to Greeks. I loved, loved, LOVED the Old Testament Bible studies but really got tired of studying Egypt. I was telling a friend today that I felt like we studied Egypt for like 40 years : )
So when you home school and you are not happy with a curriculum you can either 1) suffer through it, 2) do a switch ola or 3) tweak it. I am deciding to tweak it!
I really wanted to continue the chronological wheel of MFW but just felt l I really did ALOT of tweaking to our curriculum last year and need to change something. I have been eyeballing KONOS for a long while now. I just couldn't really seem to wrap my little finite mind around it, so I dug a bit and learned a little more about it. The more that I learned the more that I liked it. I was really drawn to the fact the the focus is character traits. So, long story short I decided that I wanted to find KONOS used and do it along with MFW. Crazy right??!! I did indeed find it used, all 3 KONOS volumes as well as the timeline figures to go with it.
After looking through the KONOS curriculum I began to reconsider doing MFW. I decided to focus on just KONOS. We tried a part of the Attentiveness unit at the end of our last school year and really enjoyed it. We loved the read a louds, the discussion, the hands on projects and such. BUT, I still didn't feel settled in my mind with it for some reason. I had been asking the Lord to lead me to the right curriculum and give me a peace about it, but I just really didn't have it.
Fast forward to last week, my friend Marta (remember the girl from the zoo) stopped by to see the KONOS books because I was trying to get her to co-op and do Konos with me (mind you I am the one that got her using MFW). She is an hour and a half a way from me but I figured, hey we'd work that little detail out later : ) Once she looked at the MFW book I'd be using next year (Rome to Reformation) and Konos she said, hey why don't you tie them together. The Lord reminded me that this was the original leading that I had. But I really didn't think I could do it since there isn't a ton of Roman studies in Konos. Marta encouraged me to just sit down and take a look at both curriculum's, and that is just what I did last Friday evening.
What I figured out was, where I couldn't pull from Konos to match up with the MFW history I could match up the science. So, some weeks we will pull in some science from Konos and some week history stuff. Hope this makes sense outside of my brain. I am really excited to finally feel at peace about it our curriculum for next year. I don't know about you but I am a little bit stressed when my school plans are in limbo. Ya know what I am sayin'!
I tell you what we are doing for the 3 R's in another post.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
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4 comments:
The worst part is the actual decision-making, isn't it? I was changing my mind right up until we started our year. LOL
It's great to have another person to talk this through with....sometimes just getting to talk about it clears answers in your own head, doesn't it. Glad you're sorted. I think we are too....kinda!
Stopping by from the Crew! Now following you. :)
http://raisingleafs.blogspot.com/
Wow, I feel as if I could have written part of this post! And, in fact, I'll be writing something kind of similar soon, as I am having a "crisis of faith" about MFW (as we are just beginning our third year with it, using CtG). I loved Adventures and enjoyed ECC...but I had to "tweak" a lot to make ECC workable for my girls (who were 8 and 9 when we did it). I was willing to do that for a year and figured things would get better with the history years...but we started CtG on July 5 and I am REALLY struggling with it! I cannot stand Streams of Civilization or Genesis for Kids, nor do I like the art program (boring!). Sigh. We will go back to the Artistic Pursuits we were using and loved and I'm looking at alternatives for both history and science - materials to cover what CtG covers, but in a more engaging way. The thing is, I already use materials other than the MFW suggestions for math, language arts, and spelling...so now I'm wondering at what point someone who says they're using a certain curriculum isn't really using it at all?? I have my alternative books coming in the mail by next Tuesday so then we'll see more clearly, but it sure is frustrating to have felt "set for life" and all of a sudden to doubt it all. I think I'm determining that I love the MFW philosophy but am finding that their materials don't often match that stated ideal...
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