For the past two weeks we have been making a lot of changes in how to set up Knotty Pines Academy so that it can be a more of a learning environment. As our family has grown and hence the number of children we are homeschooling we are finding that our old habits and ways that worked well for a few children were not working real well for the larger crowd. Our primary goal for homeschooling which has always been to create a love for learning has slowly been falling away to drudgery, procastination and boredom. We have all become less motivated and passionate about learning -- yikes!!
I have spent the past couple of months doing a lot of reading, praying and reflecting, and as always, with my mustard seed of faith God has provided a perfect and clear path for turning over a new leaf in our lifestyle of learning journey. With each passing day as we are making changes, I am becoming more and more grateful, and we are all finding ourselves truly renewed and more motivated to pursue this journey for learning....
Early in my schooling I learned that following a curriculum to teach my children was too restricting. Now with several multi-aged children, I would go nuts trying to keep up with everyone's grade level. This is probably why I became so attracted to Charlotte Mason's educational methods. Now with an early elementary learner and another on the way, I have found myself challenged between balancing all the different age groups, their specific learning needs, and the different levels of independence.
I have always loved the approach of using unit studies, but following another provider's idea of what should be included in a unit study always left me feeling like many of the subjects covered were forced, and I would walk away feeling overwhelmed. Part of my reading this past month included digging up my old tapes and books written by Valerie Bendt on how to create your own unit studies. I loved Valerie's idea to take the best of both an organized approach and Charlotte Mason's methods of using living books and copy work/dictation and applying them to a unit for study. She does not tell you what you should or shouldn't study in a unit, but her approach leaves you free to be as creative as you need to be time permitting. I found this approach refreshing: the thought of everyone studying the same topic each at their own level. This sent my creative wheels churning; and I could see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Once again God stepped in to take away any last minute doubts by enabling me to realize that this was exactly what I had been doing with the children in their literature club and occasionally during their history studies for the past two years. I also realized it was during these particular studies that we all had the most fun learning and the kids retained the most information on their studies! Soooo with all these ideas running around in my head I began another weblog which has helped me tremendously in putting down my thoughts and plans for our upcoming schooling days.
About four years ago in my pursuit to creating a learning enviroment at home I had purchased a booklet called How to set up Learning Centers in your Home by Mary Hood. This lay out has always intrigued me, but I could never really see how to implement it beyond organizing all my books and shelves into subject areas. Then last week I ran across this fantastic posting by Theresa on how they set up learning centers for their oldest child, and for the first time I could see how to make this layout work for our family! Like Theresa our family learns best with a project/task approach. Theresa's implementation using index cards was so simple and doable. I will use different colored index cards for each child and they can rotate through one station per week which would offer the time needed to focus on just one project and still cover all the subject areas required by our State's laws. I realized that while the kids were working on a unit they could implement related projects at each station, but in following Theresa's approach we could still have the freedom to implement projects that have nothing to do with the unit! I find this incredibly liberating and the children are besides themselves to get started.
As we convert the learning room we are completing a couple of mini units for history and literature, and we have many other fun units lined up waiting to be explored! The timing of turning over this new leaf when Springtime is beginning to show itself has really added to our overall excitement and in my next posting I will take pictures of our different learning centers.
Knotty Pines Academy Homeschool Blog (Retired)
