KONOS Patience Unit Study :: Part 1

We spent the last week finishing up the first part of our KONOS unit study on Patience. We have been learning all about plants! We did a small experiment to determine how necessary both water and light were to plant growth.

We learned about the parts of a flower, evergreen vs. deciduous trees, parts of a leaf, how God designed certain flowers to attract certain insects, poisonous plants, and where certain plant products are grown in our country. We picked wildflowers and made beautiful flower placemats and did a ton of illustrating!

We discussed the fruits of the Spirit and how the words we speak can be fruit. We marveled at the unbelievably beautiful flower paintings by Georgia O'Keefe and my very favorite, Claude Monet. And we talked about Luther Burbank and the amazing George Washington Carver.

Here's what I've learned after my first official month of homeschooling:

• I don't really love science, so picking this unit to start with sort of made me want to cringe.

• I don't really love science, but so far Ivy seems to, so that also sort of makes me want to cringe. Haha!

• About three weeks in, even Ivy seemed to be tiring of learning about plants, so I skipped a bunch of stuff I had planned out for the next week and a half and decided to focus on something else. And as much as I thought that would throw me off...it really didn't! It felt sort of empowering to know that if something has fallen flat, we have the freedom to change our course.

• We are able to pack a lot into our two hours a day, which still leaves loads of time for free play! Yay!

It's probably safe to say that in reality we started learning about many aspects of plant growth in May when we planted our garden. I knew that we would be starting this unit in the fall, so I figured it would be fresh in their minds. I'm convinced nothing teaches patience quite like waiting for your garden to grow. Last week we harvested the last of our garden crops and felt so much satisfaction after months of watering and caring for it.

We picked loads of carrots throughout the summer, green beans, summer squash, pumpkins, tomatoes, peppers, and more potatoes than we know what to do with! It was a blast, and a great way to officially say goodbye to summer and hello to fall.

Onto the next part of our KONOS patience unit study...bread baking! The REAL reason I picked this character trait to study first. However if I'm being honest, I believe my kids won't be the only ones learning about patience through this one. ;)

*The vast majority of these ideas were straight from the KONOS curriculum.