I’ve talked about inspiration coming from different sources: another blog or a spontaneous idea popping up from a child-selected book.
I’m also enjoying finding directed inspiration from curriculum. Sometimes it’s nice to just open up the book and do what it says to do!
I grew up using KONOS (from 3rd grade-highschool) and LOVED it. It was such a fun, natural way to learn and really helped prepare me not only for college, but also life-long learning.
Much of what we’ve done over the last several years has been inspired by the hands-on unit-study based approach in KONOS. But we “officially” dug in this last January.
I have to say that it is so nice to have a game-plan that I didn’t have to create. As we wrapped up our study of birds last week, it was so nice to just open up the book and collect materials for an incredible beak experiement!
Check out our ‘beak’ specimens!
We had been reading about different kinds of birds and what they eat. I first set out sunflower seeds and had them select which style of beak would be best for eating seeds!
The small, but precise beak proved easiest for obtaining seeds!
Next, the boys imagined they were birds who ate water-borne insects…
Xander’s little ‘tweezer’ beak just didn’t quite cut it. Keegan had the bright idea to try the sieve. It was fun to review what we knew about flamingo beaks and marvel at how wonderfully each bird is designed!
As we continued with our experiment, they learned a lot about the importance of specialized beak structure.
A staw-like beak just doesn’t cut it when trying to capture a snake.
And of course, one of their favorites: plucking worms out of the mud.
ewwww….
Yum.
…and Xander learned a hard lesson about incorrect beak structures, when Keegan landed more flying insects (aka marshmellows) with his ‘scoop’ beak.
He quickly remedied the lapse.
It’s a good thing hummingbirds don’t have strong, heavy beaks…
And so our super-easy, no thinking required, experiment came to an end. I’m sold. Curriculum is a wonderful thing!
Hi,
I’ve been searching the internet for an hour looking for reviews on KONOS High School Curriculum. I have found out that we love KONOS!! My daughter is thriving and it seems to be the perfect blend of teaching styles for her specific learning styles. We’ve had such fun this last week (our first week of KONOS)
Could you tell me anything at all about the High School Curriculum?
Thank you
Yikes. I missed your comment when you first posted it. I used the first year of KONOS History of the World when it first came out and I was in highschool. I loved it. I personally needed something hands on. I used it with my older two when my oldest was a freshman. It worked well, especially since this was a year when we had a lot of transition. It travelled with us. We had to find new books since the book list was outdated, but all-in-all we really enjoyed it! I especially loved the mapwork and my boys appreciated the freedom to pick and choose activities.
That is so perfect, thanks for linking that. I’ll add that in to my plans at some point.
We have been taking a break from KONOS this summer and then this fall to do our trip around the world. But we will be starting back up in January with Obedience!!!!!
This is wonderful. I am so excied o find you are a KONOS user. I am always looking for KONOS family blogs to hook up to.
Are you still using it this year?
Very cool!
It’s so great that you’re capturing their learning with the camera because they will love remembering these fantastic adventures when they’re older.
Thanks for more ideas!
Awesome. Jealous. You are amazing!