A family with three children using textbook methods might have one child study the Civil War another learning about Ancient Rome while another is studying the American Revolution in history. In Science one child may be studying plants, another the planets and another reptiles.

In Bible one child may be studying Moses, another studying Joseph and another studying Paul. With unit studies, history, geography, art, music, science and Bible can all be taught together to all ages.

Each child studies the topic at his level. This saves over half of your teaching and preparing time.

All children can go on field trips together, many projects can be done together, writing assignments vocabulary words will be about the same topic, just on different levels.

For example while studying animals a younger child may be able to classify birds, mammals and insects. While an older child would classify animals in much more detail such as: Arachnids, crustaceans, etc. The older learns and helps to teach the younger while the younger learns from the older child.

Delight Directed: Planning

Delight-directed learning, with a set plan like Heart of Wisdom unit studies, begins by allowing children to be a part of the planning process. During the planning phase, allow the student to participate in choosing the resources for that unit (fiction novel, colorful reference book, video, Internet site, interactive multi-media, etc.). It’s very possible that a child might balk at the unit as a whole but later find a spark in one of the individual lessons.

To continue with the food analogy, a child might, say, groan over something he sees cooking, but after a taste, finds it pleasing to his palate.

Teaching Multi-Ages: Sample Day

Mother is teaching Jenny (fifteen), John (thirteen), and Joseph (ten) a unit on the Middle Ages.

During the unit planning the three decide together on the resources. They look through the resources at Homeschool-Books.com or in the back of The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach book at theMiddle Ages Resources. The three choose Kingfisher Illustrated Encyclopedia, and Eyewitness Medieval Life from their home library. Mother orders a novel,The Door in theWall (from the library or a vendor) to read aloud during the unit.

While reviewing the lessons the children show the most interest in knights, castles, and medieval feasts. Before the unit begins they will pick up books on these topics from the library. Several opportunities will occur during the steps in each lesson to bring into play the delight-directed methods. Let’s look at an example of how each of the three childrenmight discover their own level of interest in the lesson on knights.

Unit: Middle Ages. Lesson: Knights

1. In Step One (Excite) Mother is watching each student for a spark.

Step One activities evoke feedback which shows how interested each child is in the topic and suggests the possible duration of the lesson. As they brainstorm to make lists,John and Joshua both show an intense interest in this topic.

2. In Step Two, Mother reads the provided text in the unit, and then turns to the resources chosen during the unit planning phase. She reads aloud from the suggested pages in the Kingfisher Illustrated Encyclopedia and Eyewitness Medieval Life. John and Joseph spend time reading through the suggested web sites and library resources,and print out several illustrations of a knight’s armor and weapons.

Jenny also browses the Internet sites and chooses an image of a knight to add to her portfolio,but she leaves the boys to explore the sites as she moves on to Step Three assignments.

3. In Step Three, Mother allows each child to choose an activity:

• John (13) chooses to complete a writing assignment. Mother encourages this assignment because he needs more writing practice and he enjoys this topic. John writes a separate draft paragraph for each of several topics: tournaments, jousting, suits of armor, crossbows, and the Crusades. He searches or uses the Internet to find illustrations for each summary.
• Joseph (10) chooses to create a shield with a coat of arms. He uses colored pencils to design a coat of arms similar to those he viewed from the resources. He the makes the shield from cardboard and pastes or glues the coat of arms onto the shield.
• Jenny is not as interested in this topic so she copies a paragraph from Eyewitness Medieval Life and moves on to a math lesson (more about Jenny later).

4. In Step Four the students choose how they will share their work.

• During this step,Mother and John are busy revising and correcting John’s drafts .After the corrections John glues illustrations to the summary pages and includes them in his portfolio. He chooses to add more on this topic to his portfolio andshares it with his grandparents.
• Joseph shows his shield to his father and explains his coat of arms
• Jenny adds her writing and illustrations to her portfolio and shares the work with her brothers.

In this example all three children have learned about knights. John has obviously learned the most. We know all three have learned significantly more than they would in a typical school where the children would read perhaps one boring paragraph about knights.

John and Joseph will continue on this topic in the coming weeks by choosing a novel and/or illustrated reference books from the library on knights ,or by learning more from the Internet. Their wise mother will continue to fan the flame as long as the fire burns(weeks or months). If no spark had appeared during this lesson the amount of timespent on this lesson would have been dramatically different.

Jenny did not do a lot with the lesson on knights because she did not have a spark of interest. Later, however, Jenny’s spark shows up in the “Food in the Middle Ages” lesson. She ends up spending several hours researching and planning an authentic medieval feast for her family. She designs an elaborate menu for her portfolio and reads the library book Medieval Feasts to Joshua.

Four-Steps Summary

1. During Step One, look for the spark.
2. In Step Two, the spark will be your signal to encourage your student(s) to go on to more resources. If the lesson ignites  aspark for one child and not another (which will probably be the case) don’t force all the students into spending time on further study. Take a trip to the library, or order books, or allow computer time for Internet eesearch.
3. In Step Three, allow each child to choose the activity in which to do something with what he or she just learned. This could be anything from simple copywork or an involved project.
4. In Step Four, allow each child to choose how to share the material.

Teaching is much more than providing facts—real teaching means causing to learn. The delight-directed methods work when we provide opportunities for meaningful experiences,and then wait and watch for moments when children’s eyes light up. Then they’re off and running, determined and motivated to learn!

Also see

Related: An Unplanned Delight-Directed Homeschool Day

Download a 10 page Delight Directed Teaching Chapter

All children love to learn—at least all children love to learn before they go to school. Forced learning can destroy the natural love for learning that our children are born with. Children locked into studying something they find boring are no different from adults locked into boring, irrelevant meetings. If adults cannot see the relevance of the material covered in a meeting, they will tune out or drop out. If children do not understand how the subject will help to address the concerns of their lives, they will tune out. Would you, for example, read this page if it were titled “Basic Plumbing Concepts”?  You might if you had a leak in your kitchen sink or a basement full of water. In the same way, students need to have an interest in the topic they are learning.

If we allow students a free choice, they can concentrate on learning what they might need in their lives. Freedom to choose what not to study implies freedom to learn more about what one cares about and freedom to explore new interests.

A teacher’s or parent’s first job is to cause children to want to read something, to motivate them to care so that the natural order of learning can kick into action. The educator’s job is to provide the one item which today’s education system leaves out: motivation. (Schank, 1994)

When students are given good instructional materials, they can teach themselves and they will eventually learn to locate their own resources (books, Internet sites, people, materials, classes, etc.)

For more on this subject read The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach.

The Delight-Directed Method is Biblical

The Bible instructs parents to recognize that each child is a unique individual with a way already established that needs to be recognized, acknowledged, and reckoned with by means of the truth of Scripture.

Proverbs 22:6 says Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

This verse shows us a parent’s training must be based on knowing his or her child. The Hebrew text has the personal pronoun attached to the noun “way.” It reads, “his way” and not simply “in the way he should go.” “Way” is the Hebrew word derek, which means “way, road, journey, manner.” Parents need to recognize the way each of their children is bent by the way God has designed each of them. If parents fail to recognize this, they may also fail to help launch their children into God’s plan for their lives.

Individualized Education

Roger Schank from The Institute for the Learning Sciences explains, in Engines for Education, the importance of individualized education.

Education should have a pragmatic purpose. Education ought to be about building learners’ abilities to do useful things. What is important to learn is whatever helps learners do things that they want to do or that they can be induced to want to do. Therefore, if we want to detail the knowledge students need to have, we should first detail the things students should know how to do. Then we can determine what knowledge will be useful in each case.

Depending on an individual’s situation and goals, there are many things that might be worth learning. In order to give a very detailed prescription for what knowledge a student should acquire, we must take into account that not every child will need or want to do the same things. A curriculum must therefore be individualized. It must be built around an understanding of what situations a particular learner might want to be in, or might have to be in later in life, and what abilities he will require in those situations.

Nevertheless, for many people, the notion of mandating the same knowledge for every student is appealing. Building lists of facts that one claims everyone should know is relatively simple to do. Furthermore, there is the attraction of providing standards that can be easily measured. But from the perspective of the teacher and the student, this approach spells trouble. Each mandated bit of knowledge removes more local control and drives the system towards fixed curricula and standardized tests, which not only diminishes teacher flexibility but also student choice and, therefore, student interest and initiative.

In public schools from first through twelfth grade, much of the classroom routine is shaped by an emphasis on rote learning, a strict adherence to standardized textbooks and workbooks, and a curriculum that is often enforced with drill and practice. The methods and the curriculum are molded by the questions that appear on the standardized achievement tests administered to every child from the fourth grade on. Success no longer means being able to do. Success comes to mean “academic success,” a matter of learning to function within the system, of learning the “correct” answer, and of doing well at multiple-choice exams. Success also means, sadly, learning not to ask difficult questions. When we ask how our children are doing in school, we usually mean, “are they measuring up to the prevailing standards?” rather than, “are they having a good time and feeling excited about learning?”

We should purpose to be flexible in the way we try to tap into our children’s innate interests. When we are interacting with the student we can evaluate whether learning has taken place. If one approach doesn’t work, we can drop it and try another.

The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach: Bible-Based Homeschooling

The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach is for all homeschoolers who want to make the Bible the center of their school day. This giant 500+ page book provides you with the methods, program, and resources for a course of study where students spend half the school day studying God’s Word and the other half studying God’s world (academics). Students study history chronologically and science in the order of the days of Creation. This book will encourage, motivate you and instruct you, step by step, how to give your child a Bible-focused, comprehensive education from preschool through high school; one that will train him or her to read, to study, to understand, to love to learn and, most importantly, to desire and seek true wisdom. This approach can be used for all grade levels.

When homeschoolers are asked about this book, one word continues to come up over and over–Wow! Read the excerpt today to see what all the wow is about.

• The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach ( 60-page excerpt PDF File)
• Start reading the Ebook today! $17.00 Add to cart
• Order the bound book. Retail $34.95 NOW $27.95 Add to cart

Delight-directed learning, with a set plan like Heart of Wisdom unit studies, begins by allowing children to be a part of the planning process. During the planning phase, allow the student to participate in choosing the resources for that unit (fiction novel, colorful reference book, video, Internet site, interactive multi-media, etc.). It’s very possible that a child might balk at the unit as a whole but later find a spark in one of the individual lessons.

To use a food analogy, a child might, say, groan over something he sees cooking, but after a taste, finds it pleasing to his palate.

Mother is teaching Jenny (fifteen), John (thirteen), and Joseph (ten) a unit on the Middle Ages.

During the unit planning the three decide together on the resources. They look through the resources at Homeschool-Books.com or in the back of The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach book at theMiddle Ages Resources. The three choose Kingfisher Illustrated Encyclopedia, and Eyewitness Medieval Life from their home library. Mother orders a novel,The Door in theWall (from the library or a vendor) to read aloud during the unit.

While reviewing thelessons the children show the most interest in knights, castles, and medieval feasts. Before the unit begins they will pick up books on these topics from the library. Several opportunities will occur during the steps in each lesson to bring into play the delight-directed methods. Let’s look at an example of how each of the three childrenmight discover their own level of interest in the lesson on knights.

Unit: Middle Ages. Lesson: Knights

1. In Step One (Excite) Mother is watching each student for a spark.

Step One activities evoke feedback which shows how interested each child is in the topic and suggests thepossible duration of the lesson. As they brainstorm to make lists,John and Joshua bothshow an intense interest in this topic.

2. In Step Two, Mother reads the provided text in the unit, and then turns to the resources chosen during the unit planning phase. She reads aloud from the suggested pages in the Kingfisher Illustrated Encyclopedia and Eyewitness Medieval Life. John and Joseph spend time reading through the suggested web sites and library resources,and print out several illustrations of a knight’s armor and weapons.

Jenny also browses the Internet sites and chooses an image of a knight to add to her portfolio,but she leaves the boys to explore the sites as she moves on to Step Three assignments.

3. In Step Three, Mother allows each child to choose an activity:

• John (13) chooses to complete a writing assignment. Mother encourages this assignment because he needs more writing practice and he enjoys this topic. John writes a separate draft paragraph for each of several topics: tournaments, jousting, suits of armor, crossbows, and the Crusades. He searches or uses the Internet to find illustrations for each summary.
• • Joseph (10) chooses to create a shield with a coat of arms. He uses colored pencils to design a coat of arms similar to those he viewed from the resources. He the nmakes the shield from cardboard and pastes or glues the coat of arms onto the shield.
• • Jenny is not as interested in this topic so she copies a paragraph from Eyewitness Medieval Life and moves on to a math lesson (more about Jenny later).

4. In Step Four the students choose how they will share their work.

• During this step,Mother and John are busy revising and correcting John’s drafts .After the corrections John glues illustrations to the summary pages and includes them in his portfolio. He chooses to add more on this topic to his portfolio andshares it with his grandparents.
• Joseph shows his shield to his father and explains his coat of arms
• Jenny adds her writing and illustrations to her portfolio and shares the work with her brothers.

In this example all three children have learned about knights. John has obviously learned the most. We know all three have learned significantly more than they would in a typical school where the children would read perhaps one boring paragraph about knights.

John and Joseph will continue on this topic in the coming weeks by choosing a novel and/or illustrated reference books from the library on knights ,or by learning more from the Internet. Their wise mother will continue to fan the flame as long as the fire burns(weeks or months). If no spark had appeared during this lesson the amount of timespent on this lesson would have been dramatically different.

Jenny did not do a lot with the lesson on knights because she did not have a spark of interest. Later, however, Jenny’s spark shows up in the “Food in the Middle Ages” lesson. She ends up spending several hours researching and planning an authentic medieval feast for her family. She designs an elaborate menu for her portfolio and reads the library book Medieval Feasts to Joshua.

Four-Steps Summary

1. During Step One, look for the spark.
2. In Step Two, the spark will be your signal to encourage your student(s) to go on to more resources. If the lesson ignites aspark for one child and not another (which will probably be the case) don’t force all the students into spending time on further study. Take a trip to the library, or order books, or allow computer time for Internetr esearch.
3. In Step Three, allow each child to choose the activity in which to do something with what he or she just learned. This could be anything from simple copywork or an involved project.
4. In Step Four, allow each child to choose how to share the material.

Teaching is much more than providing facts—real teaching means causing to learn. Thedelight-directed methods work when we provide opportunities for meaningfulexperiences,and then wait and watch for moments when children’s eyes light up. Then they’re off and running, determined and motivated to learn!

The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach: Bible-Based Homeschooling

The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach is for all homeschoolers who want to make the Bible the center of their school day. This giant 500+ page book provides you with the methods, program, and resources for a course of study where students spend half the school day studying God’s Word and the other half studying God’s world (academics). Students study history chronologically and science in the order of the days of Creation. This book will encourage, motivate you and instruct you, step by step, how to give your child a Bible-focused, comprehensive education from preschool through high school; one that will train him or her to read, to study, to understand, to love to learn and, most importantly, to desire and seek true wisdom. This approach can be used for all grade levels.

When homeschoolers are asked about this book, one word continues to come up over and over–Wow! Read the excerpt today to see what all the wow is about.

• The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach ( 60-page excerpt PDF File)
• Start reading the Ebook today! $17.00 Add to cart
• Order the bound book. Retail $34.95 NOW $27.95 Add to cart

Related: An Unplanned Delight-Directed Homeschool Day