"That right there is a child that can think outside of the box, children who make their own design. These are people that anyone in the corporate world would kill to have, because they want a person that does things differently."

"So, the whole idea of school and learning becomes blurred with play. Imagination just takes over."

-Jessica Hulcy

At a recent homeschool conference, I was encouraged and amazed as I listened to a petite Texan dynamo do an impression of Winston Churchill as she expounded on how we, as teachers of our own, need to stand firm in the battle for our children's hearts and minds. I walked away from this seminar with a renewed commitment to homeschooling as well as with a vision to continue exploring a style of teaching that keeps my entire family excited about learning and discovering. This is a style that works well with the high achiever as well as the child who may struggle with learning.

That style of learning is the Unit Study Method and the woman who so inspired me is Jessica Hulcy, co-creator (with Carole Thaxton) of the KONOS curriculum. KONOS has the distinction of being the first unit study curriculum for homeschoolers, as well as one of the first homeschool curriculum of any kind. As I listened to her speak I was struck by how practical her suggestions were - tips like not doing outside activities in the first few years of teaching, and realizing that there will be different seasons in your life as a parent teacher, and to plan accordingly. As I reflect on our school year, it is very clear that the things my children remember are the ones that involved exploration-eating George Washingon's breakfast, making Pilgrim costumes, and reading about the struggles of an Illinois family during the Civil War. Those are the things our kids will remember, and here at The Old Schoolhouse, we have the exciting opportunity to learn more about this wonderful way of learning with the "queen of unit studies," Mrs. Jessica Hulcy.

TOS: Welcome Jessica! For all of our readers who are new to homeschooling, how would you define a unit study?

Jessica: Well, defining a unit is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. It is like courtship. To some people it is one thing; to other people it is another. A unit is the same type of creature. It can simply mean that you are talking about one topic and you are integrating all the subjects to point to that topic. That is a kind of unit. But, when we wrote KONOS we had something different in mind. Our units have as their greatest focus, as their umbrella if you will, godly character. That is how KONOS got its name. It is Greek for cone - and it is used to illustrate God at the top of all knowledge. He is at the very apex of our lives overseeing all areas of life. Quite frankly, that is how the world is concocted. So a unit, instead of actually being a subject, is waltzing through, studying God's creation in a very natural way, as opposed to studying it in a segmented way.

One of the best characterizations that I have of a unit comes from a friend of mine, Monty Swan, in Colorado. He uses an analogy between eating a piece of delicious cake, which has all these ingredients that have been mixed together and cooked. Compare this to eating a tablespoon of baking soda, 2 cups of sugar, 3 eggs, 1 cup of flour and 2 tablespoons of butter separately-not cooked, not mixed-definitely not the same taste results. I think that is a great illustration of what a unit is.

TOS: So instead of separating your learning into grade levels and textbooks you meld it into this delicious concoction. Tell me, how did Konos get its start?

Jessica: We started KONOS 21 years ago because we wanted to teach naturally. We did not want to teach "fragmented." Well, in truth KONOS hit the bull's-eye on five counts. First of all, most people come to homeschooling wanting to teach not just the head of their child but also their heart. We hit the bulls-eye by focusing on godly character as our over-riding theme. The second bull's-eye we hit was the fact that it was a unit. It was integrated. That integrating allowed us to progress very naturally. If you are studying plants, you may be drawing the plants; you may be writing about and researching the plants. So, you are combining all sorts of subjects. You are not just studying science. Then, aside from the godly character focus and the unit, we really hit the bull's-eye on hands-on learning. Hands-on learning teaches children the way God designed them. God designed children that wiggle. He didn't make any mistakes about it. We need to honor the way those wiggly children learn. Of course, there are times for them to sit. But they are designed to move. Hands-on allows them to learn through every sense. The fourth bull's-eye we hit was discovery learning. I don't know many curricula that have this element. Discovery learning is where children are not given instruction; it is where children figure things out for themselves. It is critical thinking. We are teaching Yankee ingenuity. It is training kids to think outside the box. The fifth, the by-product that is the greatest thing of all, is that as we study together in a multi-level environment, we are building relationships between family members. Our sons all roomed together in college - that's their choice. Two of them are living together right now as adults. This method builds a strong, strong family relationship.

TOS: So the list of positive results is endless. One question that people I know who are contemplating diving in ask a lot is, "How do I find time to do math?" "How do I find time to fit in language arts and phonics while I am doing the Unit Study method?"

Jessica: Well, many things can be taught out of order, non-sequentially. Those are the things you teach in a unit, subjects such as art, history, and science. Not until 9th grade do you really begin to march through science. I was a biology major, and before you reach that point, you march through 9th grade physical science, 10th grade biology, 11th grade chemistry, and 12th grade physics. You do your history the same way. Up until that point, there is this huge, great pool of knowledge that you are studying. That is where the unit comes into play.

The way we make sure that we touch on all the "three-Rs," which are going to be on your SAT test, is that there is a schedule that says in the morning, "reading, writing, arithmetic." In the afternoon, the schedule says, "hands-on units, KONOS, learning by doing, discovery." Units are relegated to the afternoon. When kids have lost their attention span, and are wiggly, they can be up and doing. In the morning, when we are doing the reading, the writing and the arithmetic, I really believe in killing ten birds with one stone. So, I am going to do reading that is about the unit that I am on. When I was doing a unit on obedience, I would be studying kings and queens because servants had to be obedient to kings. We would do the history of the feudal system; we would do a tapestry (that's art), but the reading would be Door in the Wall, and that would be my literature book. Yet, I would also read all about knights and heraldry. And, there comes my history into play. So, even in the morning, when I am doing my reading, we will reinforce the unit. It dove tails. Thirdly, the writing can fit into it. My paper might be on how someone becomes a knight, or a little kid's paragraph might be about how one king, David, who was not always a king, slew Goliath. So, even in the morning, the reading, writing and arithmetic time enhance the unit.

TOS: Jessica, when I am doing these wonderful, creative things, how do I find time to fit in the laundry, the cooking, and the taking care of babies?

Jessica: Well, that is something that we have in our seminars on creating the balance, because that is a very real question. People need to be able to do the laundry. What units allow me to do is teach all of my children at one time. Let's say I have a seventh grader, a third grader and a first grader. In the morning, I am juggling their math. If they are on the same subject matter, we are at least reading together. Maybe one child is reading to a younger child, and that younger child is just absorbing. I don't see how you would do it any other way and have time to do anything else. In the afternoon, people think that teachers have to sit there when you ask a child to make a shield. Why sit there? Just get them started. Say, "Look, I am going to spend 20-30 minutes with you looking at costumes. I want you to come back with the ideas on how to make these costumes." My children never really needed me for the creativity. I can remember when we were doing the character trait of patience. We were studying things that you had to be patient for, so we did bread making. Well, of course with bread, you study yeast, mold and mildew. Nobody in the world wants to study yeast, mold and mildew except people that want to make beer. So, here we are studying yeast, mold and mildew and we are making bread. We are asking, "What would happen if you add too hot of water or too cold of water?" We are doing discovery learning. We are making a baker's hat for art. As we are making the baker's hat, one of my children begins crying and whining. He says, "I don't know what to do. You need to show me; you are the teacher." Now, children don't usually (unless they have been in public school, or are timid) want you to tell. They usually want to strike out on their own. But, some kids have reservations initially. So, you help them. "Okay, what would you measure? Would you measure your leg, your hips, your finger, or your head?"

Then, "What would you make it out of, steel, plastic, or fabric?"

"Okay, thank you Mother, I really don't want you to tell me anymore." The idea is that you prime the pump and they are on their own. You want that. That is the whole point of them becoming the researcher. That right there is a child that can think outside of the box, children who make their own design. These are people that anyone in the corporate world would kill to have, because they want a person who does things differently, and has the motivation and initiative to start themselves.

TOS: So, a big part of it is teaching our kids to be self-starters.

Jessica: This is something that you almost don't have to teach. Do you have to teach your child to go outside and imagine and play? If you had boys, and you were studying medieval times, they will take those little noodles you use for swimming, and they are jousting. They are jousting the whole rest of the afternoon. So, the whole idea of school and learning becomes blurred with play. Imagination just takes over.

TOS: Do kids learn self-discipline and character with such a fun and hands-on method?

Jessica: I wish that I could say yes, but I don't know that they learn it. What we do, is we focus on it and we practice it. So, it would be like saying, because I take my children to church they are going to turn their hearts to the Lord. There's no guarantee, because the Holy Spirit is the One who does the moving in our children. However, we are commanded by Scripture to train our children as we walk with them, as we talk with them, as we sit with them and as we lie down with them.

TOS: So in your daily life you are, "hiding God's word in their heart." One of my favorite authors on education, John Taylor Gatto, in his book The Underground History of American Education, states, "When children are stripped of a primary experience base as confinement schooling must do to justify it's existence, the natural sequence of learning is destroyed. A sequence which puts experience first. Only much later, after a long bath in experience, does the thin gruel of abstraction mean very much." How does the unit study method fit with this assertion that experience is fundamental to learning?

Jessica: Here is another quote-one I love. It comes from Endangered Minds by Jane Healy and it says, "Without experiences there are no concepts. Without concepts, there is no attention. Without attention, they don't know what you are talking about." So, you don't even get to first base without experience. I found this to be true when I taught in under-privileged ghetto schools. I taught in black schools in the inner city before teachers were mandated to cross-over, one of the earliest years prior to bussing. I can remember trying to teach these children Pavlov's theory, where a bell would ring and you would present the dog with food and he would salivate. Later, without the food being presented you would ring the bell and he would just begin to salivate because he had this memory of food.

I said to these children, thinking that we would be on the same page, "What do you do when you see a dog?" And, they said, "Run!"

I realized at that moment that their base of experience was so different than mine that I could not communicate with them on all points because of their lack of experience. I realized that the dogs they saw were attack dogs - they were frightening to them; my thought had been that you would pet the dog, but that was not their thought. You can see that their experience structured their response and I believe many children are deprived of experiences. Their parents want them to go through a series of workbooks and fill in blanks when far more learning would take place on a nature walk picking up leaves-experiencing, smelling, remembering.

Today I had two little boys with me. We were walking in the yard and I picked up some mint. I said to them, "Feel the stem. What do you feel?"

"It is square."

Then I said, "Every plant that is a mint plant has a square stem, from rosemary to oregano to thyme. It has an odor and it has a square stem." I then sent them to go find some more square stems of different plants. That is discovering, that is exploring and that is hands-on. It belongs to them.

TOS: After twenty some years of homeschooling, what do you think of the end results? How are the adults, raised on unit studies, faring? Do they still pursue knowledge? Can they get a good job? Can they go against the crowd if that is what God is calling them to do?

Jessica: We know about a young girl who went to college, and she had done KONOS and KONOS History of the World. A history professor asked her, "Where did you learn so much history?" And, she said, "I homeschooled." He said, "I have never seen someone who knows so much."

My oldest son Jason is 27. He is the person we originally wrote KONOS for because he never sat down. Carol and I had two six-year-old boys and we felt like it was the best way to teach them. Well, Jason has had a number of jobs. After college, he went into the computer industry, did exceedingly well, made way too much money and got tired of it. He is now working with a high-end builder, learning building. Everyone who has hired him has said the same thing, "I don't believe this kid." My other son, who is a teacher and coach, gets the same comment. "I don't believe this kid." What they can't believe is that these kids bring so much to the table. They have such poise because they have been forced to dramatize, and dress in starfish costumes that no other person would dare to be caught dead in. When Jason was in college, he was hanging around with a group of boys and doing quite a lot of activities. He was investing in the stock market, he was a big hunter, he was marinating his own food, and doing his own cook-offs, he was an auto mechanic and he was doing a whole bunch of computer stuff for the college and other people. He was interested in so many things. One of his friends said, "Jason, can you find me a hobby?", as if this kid could not find a hobby for himself. Jason has too many things that he could be interested in and pursue. This summer, things were a little slow and he started a tree farm at our house. I think the benefit is that the sky is the limit.

TOS: It has been a pleasure to spend time with such an eloquent, experienced teacher, mother, and woman of God. I personally am inspired to rethink how I am doing my schooling. Thank you, Jessica, for speaking to our readers this issue. We hope you'll come back again soon!

Jessica Hulcy, co-author of KONOS curriculum, is a 21-year homeschool veteran, mother of four sons, and popular national speaker. She and her husband Wade live on a Texas farm where she continues homeschooling her youngest son and leads yearly European tours.

Jennifer Pepito is a homeschooling mother who enjoys reading, writing and country living. She and her husband Scott live in the Sierra Nevada foothills with their five children and make their way yearly to Mexico for mission work