unit studies – lovingeveryleaf.com

For the past month or so my boys and I have been living in 1935. In Maycomb, Alabama. We have felt the berating accusations of Mrs. Lafayette Dubose as we walk outside, and my eldest has been mimicking Scout’s thoughtless exclamations, “What the sam hill are you doing?!….But Atticus, he has gone and drowned his dinner in syrup!”

Yes, we have been reading To Kill a Mockingbird, little knowing that this would be the book my boys would read as its author prepares to leave this world. For me, that book was Cry the Beloved Country when Alan Paton died in 1988, my senior year of high school. Both books teach us something about race relations and the innate dignity of humanity. My boys finished the novel on Thursday, Ms. Lee passed away Friday morning, we watched Gregory Peck magnificently portray Atticus Finch that night in our basement, and then we attended our local repertory theater to see the play performed Saturday evening. This week we will be involved in one final project to close out our time with Jem and Jean Louise Finch. They will choose to construct the Radley home, create a storyboard of one of their favorite, meaningful scenes, or write an obituary for one of the book’s deceased characters. I will leave it up to them.

Here is S’s drawing of the Radley place. Scout is peering into the knot hole of the tree, while Boo secretly peeps through the curtains. “Atticus was right. One time he said you never really knew a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.” chapter 31

There was occasional complaining this month around the amount of work related to this book, but I am proud of their efforts, especially as they struggled to think through issues. Typically, we would have enjoyed this book together as a read aloud, but five-year-old G presented a problem. Due to the sensitive subject matter, and the fact that he soaks everything up that his brothers are involved in, I decided to have them read the book on their own, working through it at a similar pace. They wrote out definitions to new vocabulary they encountered in the chapters. They composed a few summaries or written narration of sections. They answered comprehension questions either in written form (neat handwriting, complete sentences) or in a discussion forum. We often used the questions found here online. Occasionally, I pulled a quote by Atticus to use as dictation.

We did some preliminary research on the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and Jim Crow laws. We used the few sites where I provide the links here. And we also used this one to learn a bit about the author herself, as well as her childhood friend Truman Capote. My guys had a good time examining the map we found online of fictional Maycomb. They traced the steps Jem would have taken to retrieve his torn overalls, and the route the children may have taken to sneak out after Atticus the night before the trial.

We created a word cloud together with wordle pulling character names, themes and events out of the novel. We discussed and defined concepts like flashbacks, foreshadowing, and Bildungsroman.

Graciously, a semi-retired judge of the Court of Appeals of Indiana, whom we met at our church, willingly ate lunch with my kids, and a couple of other homeschooling families, and talked with them about the law and the United States Constitution. What made this a particularly meaningful meeting was that our friend happened to be African-American and he happened to be raised in the South during the 1940s and 1950s. Not only were our kids able to ask him questions about his family members and personal experiences, but he also took the time and care to impart words of wisdom similar to Atticus Finch’s – always do what is right, there are other ways of handling things when you are angry, and there are proper ways of engaging with people who disagree with you. I am elated our kids were able to take advantage of this opportunity to listen to a live person of this caliber speak of historical and meaningful things. And all I had to do was ask. I am constantly on the move to uncover ways people in our community can help me supplement my children’s education. I am so grateful our friend took the time to share with us.

As my family leaves Maycomb, Alabama, and as the world bids a grateful farewell to Nelle Harper Lee, I pray some of these memories and lessons remain with my children long after the vocabulary lists and written paragraphs are obsolete.

“First of all,” he said, “if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view-” chapter 3

It seems peculiar that I should feel the need to write something in defense of spending so much time with history. There has been such a push in education, however, in recent times to concentrate almost exclusively on “necessary” academic subjects, the three Rs, that is reading, writing and arithmetic. Even science and foreign language take priority over history, cursive and art, which seem relegated to extras, or even worse.

For us, however, history seems to be at the heart of our academic day. And I don’t mean the memorization of dates, quotes and people, but the love, deference and analysis that we give to the study . I do not pretend to know enough to speak intelligently about educational philosophies, although I researched them heavily before beginning our home education. If pressed into explaining what I am attempting to do with my guys I guess I would say we are definitely eclectic, influenced most by unit studies and Charlotte Mason. As you can see in the blurry photo above, we happily make use of Susan Wise Bauer’s The Story of the World and supplement periodically, trying to find “living books,” which fit best into our current study. Although Bauer is closely associated with classical education, her history works well with narration and my own ideas about literature-based learning. I am not necessarily concerned that my children remember every important detail, but more that I am able to point the way for them to educate themselves, not merely while they are “of school age,” but far beyond. I want to teach them to teach themselves, to learn how to learn, and to love learning.

The question is not, -how much does the youth know when he has finished his education- but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and therefore, how full is the life he has before him?

Charlotte Mason in School Education

What follows are a few simple reasons we find history significant to our studies:

1. It is a means of incorporating multiple disciplines, such as reading, narration, writing, and geography, as well as developing other skills like note taking.

2. It is easier to appreciate art and literature through the ages as it relates to major historical events and shifts in thought. Not convinced art is significant in and of itself? Some argue it is what defines us as human.

3. It is a built-in venue for teaching writing and thinking. Beginning with narration (or retelling stories) we can make use of historical events as a natural springboard for writing summaries, analyses and eventually drawing important connections.

4. Closely tied to number three, the careful study of history teaches us to think. There are no obvious or objective answers in history. We glean from it what we will. A proper study of history forces us to be critical in our view of world events. Learning how events are interconnected, or how one event may precipitate another, is an important exercise for growing minds. Particularly important for middle schoolers who are naturally black-and-white in their thinking, history provides a way for us to discuss the morality, meaning and potential consequences of major decisions, thoughts and events.

5. It helps us appreciate where others have been and where we are all going. It is difficult to understand the present, and project appropriately about the future, if we do not have a grasp on the past.

6. It helps us to appreciate different cultures, foods, languages and peoples. Training our children to accept others begins early. History is a natural way to cultivate this.

In spending our days looking through books on the Vikings, Napoleon or what precipitated the Great War, we are not merely looking up a date or a concise list to satisfy the requirements of an essay question. Rather, we are the ones asking the questions. We are drawing pictures and maps. We are questioning who we are, and are learning to express it.

*Does your family enjoy history? Is there a beloved subject you and your family find yourself defending?*

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Tag: unit studies

Living in Maycomb

Of historical importance