KONOS

It is WAY past time for me to talk about KONOS Character Based Unit Study Curriculum by Carole Thaxton and Jessica Hulcy. I guess I've been so busy preparing myself for this adventure that I have not blogged as much, must less shared about KONOS.

As you might be able to tell from this blog, I have been homeschooling my children the last few years using the principles of Charlotte Mason and following Ambleside Online. I still believe the principles are great. Last spring, I began to see that I needed help in taking my teaching to a new level.

I began to research KONOS and the unit study approach, especially for my younger two sons. The older of the two had thrived on the great literature we were reading to a point, but I felt he and his younger brother needed me to add more active and hands-on learning. I will admit, there are spurts of this in me, but I am not an original thinker but spurred on by other ideas to make my own.

I had known about and even looked at KONOS before, but was overwhelmed at the time. I decided it was time to give it a closer look. I could immediately see that the boys would get into it and the growth it would cause in them. I got volume 2, but soon decided that I might as well start with Vol. 1 (It doesn't matter which you use first, but they created Vol. 1 when they had younger children).

During the summer months, I collected books, watched Jessica's videos, tried her sample online co-op lessons and read everything I could!

Basically, the volumes are broken down into character traits. Under each character trait, we learn things from every field of study that might connect with that trait. For example: Attentiveness is 4 weeks. First, we talk about what it means to pay attention and concentrate (love the concentrated orange juice example!). We talk about examples in the Bible, like when God Called Samuel, Mary and Martha and how Jesus watched to follow the lead of the Father in his ministry. Then we study the ear, the eye, Helen Keller, Alexander Graham Bell, the orchestra and its parts and much, much more. We watch videos, read books, do copy work, do experiments, act out scenes and keep a notebook of our work.

That is just a brief account, there are WAY more things we have done and way more things available in the lists! But, I'm sure you get the picture.

The next post I will tell about our first two weeks doing Vol. Attentiveness and our co-op that we will have this afternoon!