PrincipledMom™

I am not crazy about the term "unit study." I much prefer "integrated study" but it's really just semantics, so for the sake of the search engines I will use unit study here.

As I was considering again this whole idea of unit study, related to Principle Approach and most importantly to my little lambs, I had some thoughts. Unit studies can be enjoyable. They can also take over your life. If you are not careful they, like anything else out of balance, suck every ounce of enjoyment out of education. I came up with a list of things I am printing out to keep in my teacher's notebook concerning this.

Education is not about the activities but about the learning. More activities does not equal more learning. Simple is almost always better.

I want my unit studies to be:

• not fun, but interesting (Ps. 16:11, Prov. 2:10, Ps. 145:18, 19)
• not complicated, but complete (Mt. 11:29, Job 37:16, 2 Tim. 3:16)
• not only temporal, but eternal (2 Cor. 4:18, Eph. 5:15-17)
• not fact-based, but based on Biblical principles  (Is. 28:10,13; Ps. 119:40,94)
• not standard issue but customized (Prov. 22:6)

When my plans are led by the Holy Spirit and based on the Word of God, they will do all of that and more.

So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. Is 55:11

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Well I'm late with a recap because I have been pretty ill with a respiratory thing. Here's what we did last week in our unit on homekeeping.

• We defined keeping home. We looked up scriptures and discussed things needed to keep home--diligence, organization, etc. We discussed what it means to "bless" your home. 
• We learned about the history of cleaning through the ages with Cleaning the House by John Mala and 300 Years of Housekeeping Collectibles by Linda Franklin.
  We drew our unhappy (messy home). We will finish the unit with drawing a happy (clean home).
• We read several cleaning books: Five Little Monkeys with Nothing to Do, In a Minute!, Spring Cleaning, Boo and Baa on a Cleaning Spree and Home Tools among them.
• We are coloring a picture each day from Doorposts' coloring book on Psalm 31.
• We memorized Psalm 31:10.
• We made a kid-safe cleaning solution with baking soda, Borax and water. Now they have a special spray they like to use.
• They did worksheets for math. 
• And more...

It was a fun week. We learned a lot about cleaning and God's idea of home keeping and blessing. This week we will continue, but my health has put things on a bit of a hold so far. We will start to work on a schedule and lots more that I will post next week.

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In my last post I talked about the latest turn in my journey. I am venturing into unit studies and already I am more at home than I have ever been as a home educator. I have come home in more ways than one.

You may be surprised to learn about the topic of my first unit study. It is home keeping. You read right. (It is called home education, right?) That may seem a strange place to start, but you haven't been to my house. It is a struggle for all of us to stay organized and orderly and it stops here. Now. Here is a snapshot of how this will work at our house.

We will begin with God's design for women, using a concordance and Webster's 1828 dictionary. We will also see how God intends for us to live, as children of God. We will note principles, such as God's orderly nature, God's Principle of Individuality and Christian self-government. These principles will be the over-arching themes throughout this study. They will reason from God's Word for themselves what their unique roles as children and as young women are, liberating them to be what God intended.

Once the foundation has been laid and they know why we need to keep a neat home, we will move to the how. This will be things like the history of cleaning around the world, lots of children's books (fiction and non-fiction) about the topic, samples from literature like Little House on the Prairie. We will mix our own kid-safe cleaning solutions, sew aprons, create charts, estimate task times, and by the end of the month we will have created a chart to keep a neat home together.

After this month is done, we will continue this training. Each Monday will be a sort of "Home Economics" day. We will learn all the things it takes to manage a home well, and do it with Joy. This will include meal preparation and food safety, sewing, cleaning skills, budgeting, shopping and making menus and time management. The other four days will fall into our usual lesson routine. As my son grows older we will teach him these things as well, along with some "manly things" that he will need to know.

It seems strange to say, but I am so excited to realize that it's okay to teach my kids what I think they should know in this area, and that it can be a part of learning, just as math or history. So I feel the liberty to learn along with them as we start this new life--at home. I hope you will follow along and offer any insight you may have.

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