Jessica Hulcy
The
Unit Study
Homeschooler
Patience
Attentiveness
Godly
Courage
Responsibility
Obedience
Orderliness
Trust
Ibegan homeschooling in 1981 when I attempted to talk another mother out of homeschooling. After a week of my rantings, Carole Thaxton explained what she was going to do and how
she was going to do it, and when I finally
listened, I thought it was . . . fabulous!
Carole had been praying for someone
to homeschool with her. At first blush she
considered me an answer to prayer, but as
I talked, she amended her pray to “Lord,
please don’t let her be the one!” But, I was
“the one.” Within a week, Wade and I had
made a 180-degree turn and were homeschooling with the Thaxtons.
Carole’s Concept
Carole hooked me with her goal of want-
ing to teach Godly character to her kids
at the same time that she was teaching
academics. Killing two birds with one
stone interested my German efficiency,
and her methods resonated with my per-
sonal teaching experience. Carole’s re-
search indicated that hands-on learning
(vs. memorization of facts) not only cre-
ated long-term learning but also kept
children interested in the topic. Carole’s
homerun idea was to use units arranged
around Godly character traits. Having
Carole’s homerun
idea was to use units
arranged around Godly
character traits.
grown up in a family where everything
was “themed,” the idea of units resonated
with me as well. I was hooked.
Carole’s husband, Charles, had done
post-doctorate studies at Harvard years
before their family started homeschool-
ing, and it was there in the Harvard class-
room that the seed of Carole’s concept had
taken root. One of Charles’s professors
had explained life as a pie with various
slices: business, family, education, rec-
reation, religion. Charles challenged his
professor. Taking the chalk, Charles drew
a triangle over the circle, making it a cone,
and placed the word God at the top of the
cone: “God is not one slice of a person’s
life. . . . God is over every aspect of a per-
son’s life.”
Soon, a group of students met weekly
to discuss the strange ideas from the
Thaxtons. The group was named KO-
NOS, which was Greek for cone, not
knowing the name would resurface many
years later as a homeschool curriculum
designed to teach Godly character traits.
Practicing Character Traits
Carole had wiggly boys like I did, so we
agreed that practicing the character trait
was imperative to understanding it. In the
“Patience: Bread Baking” unit, we did activities that required patience and thinking, such as baking bread and waiting
for dough to rise or designing and making bakers’ hats. In the “Attentiveness:
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