What About Curriculum?

What is Curriculum Anyway?

Curriculum is simply a tool or set of tools. You can use a "complete curriculum", which usually means a set of textbooks or workbooks, with teacher's manuals and even lesson plans sometimes, from one particular company. Examples of these are Abeka Books, Christian Liberty Academy, and Bob Jones University Press.

The type of curriculum you use should really depend not only upon how you teach (or would like to teach) but also upon how your children learn. If you have a child who is the type who "could tear apart a steel anvil", meaning she learns best by touching, taking apart, and just generally getting her hands into something (as our daughter Paige does) then a very structured, text/workbook based curriculum will probably bring nothing but frustration to your lives. (This is also the child who loves to be read to but can't sit still during a story? Maybe you know her...) We began homeschooling with a fairly structured curriculum, and it definitely was NOT worth the hassle!

There are many different approaches to home education. There are those who use a very structured "school at home" approach. There are those who use a very unstructured, learning-just-comes-naturally approach (also called unschooling), and there are those of us who take the middle of the road, or "eclectic" approach.

What We Use/What it Covers:
Modern Curriculum Press Mathematics
A Reason For Writing (Penmanship)
The Writing Road to Reading by Romalda Spalding(used with)Teaching Reading at Home by Wanda Sanseri (as the teacher's guide) (Teaches phonics, reading and spelling to college level)
KONOS Character Curriculum (Covers literature, science/reasoning, applied math, arts/crafts/drama, history/social studies, Bible, and Character training thru 8th grade.)

What Are Unit Studies?

A unit study is a study of a particular theme, which relates many (or all) educational subjects back to that theme. There are many pre-packaged (in other words most of the work has been done for you) unit studies available. I have written a couple of my own studies, when a certain history curriculum we were using just wasn't working out the way I'd liked. I took their reading list (which was excellent) and just started using that and formed the studies around the themes. Instead of studying JUST Leif Ericsson, as the curriculum instructed, we studied him briefly but dove headfirst into studying Vikings. The kids loved that study and we had a wonderful time learning all we could about how the Vikings lived.

Now we are using a WONDERFUL curriculum called KONOS. Konos is a very hands-on unit study approach using Christian Character Traits as the theme for the studies. Under the trait of Obedience, we studied Kings & Queens, and Horses. We are now studying the trait of Patience, and are doing Plant Growth as the unit.

Konos Character Curriculum

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