As a busy homeschool mom of 11, out of necessity, I have become a bit of an “expert” in finding ways to keep our learning time manageable, simple, and efficient.
Unit studies are one of them.
Although I have come across so many fantastic unit study curriculums on this journey of ours, the one that has become a mainstay of our homeschool routine has been KONOS.
Now I’m going to admit, at first glance, this resource can look quite intimidating. With its phone book-sized girth and thousands of activities offered, I’ve seen even seasoned homeschoolers run from this curriculum simply because they were so overwhelmed at its sheer volume.
Don’t let it scare you! Once you take the time to sort through it and find a way that works for your family it can be one of the most comprehensive, challenging, and FUN curriculums you’ve ever come across.
Since I get so many questions about how I implement it into our homeschool routine, today I’m going to share a recent KONOS day with each of our groups- the Littles, Middles, and Teens.
Before I begin, I just want to say that these are sample days that we’ve done in the past week or two. I do not do KONOS with every group every day. Typically, I alternate between doing KONOS with the Littles one day and then doing it with the Middles and the Teens (separately) the next. With that being said, here we go!
(This post contains affiliate links.)
Sample KONOS Day with the Littles
Bible
- Did devotions with their older siblings
- We read one story from their Bible story book (Bible)
KONOS (Valentine’s Day Unit Study)
- Read-Alouds- St. Valentine and Valentine’s Day Is… (History, Social Studies)
- Copywork from 1 Corinthians 13- “Love is patient. Love is Kind.” (Language Arts, Bible)
- Decorated construction paper hearts with stickers and glued copywork verse in the middle (Art)
Math/Spelling
- We had a list of Valentine-related words that they copied 2x each (Spelling)
- They did their regular math one-on-one with me (Math)
Sample KONOS Day with the Middles
Bible
- Devotions (Bible)
- Read through a section of the Book of Matthew with me (We take turns reading the verses aloud) (Bible, Reading)
KONOS (Africa Unit Study)
- Read-aloud- The Red Pyramid (1 Chapter) (History, Geography, Social Studies, Literature)
- Looked at several library books about Egyptian hieroglyphs and watched a video about them (History)
- Wrote a message and created unique hieroglyphs for each word (Language Arts, Critical Thinking, Art)
- Transferred hieroglyph message onto our “Hieroglyph Wall” (butcher paper taped to the wall) and tried to decipher each other’s messages (Language Arts, Critical Thinking, Art)
Math/Spelling/Silent Reading
- They did their regular math one-on-one with me and partnered up to practice multiplication with flash cards (Math)
- We had a list of Egypt-related vocabulary words which we discussed, and they wrote them 3x each (Language Arts, Social Studies, History, Geography)
- They each read one chapter in a book of their choice (Reading)
Sample KONOS Day with the Teens
Bible
- We discussed various passages about courage (Bible)
KONOS (Revolutionary War Unit Study)
- Read-Aloud- Johnny Tremain (1/2 chapter- the printing is very tiny and makes for long reading) (Literature, History)
- Watched a video about how America became a nation (History, Social Studies, Geography)
- Completed a timeline worksheet of the 13 original colonies on which they labeled the colonies, lakes and rivers, mountain ranges, and shaded the British, French, and Spanish claims (Geography, History)
Grammar/Algebra/Silent Reading
- They each did one lesson from Daily Grams (Language Arts)
- They had one-on-one time with me for algebra (Math)
- They each read one chapter of their Revolutionary War-related books- Dear America – The Winter of Red Snow and King George – What Was His Problem? (Literature, History, Social Studies, Geography)
Believe it or not, that’s it!
Now I know some of you are wondering why we never covered science or electives on these particular days. There are actually a few reasons:
- Since my kids are natural science-lovers, most of the notebooking they do is on science-related topics. (They do notebooking on the days they do not do KONOS (and sometimes on days that they do!)
- These particular unit studies are history-based, but there have been plenty of times that we’ve done more science-based units. It all balances out.
- Since we are relaxed homeschoolers, my kids have plenty of time for self-directed learning. This is often the time when they will pursue activities that would be considered electives (and science, and history, and math, and…)
- I truly believe that life and learning cannot be separated, so I am fully confident that these subjects will be covered because they are a part of the world we live in.
Now I’d like to hear from you. Have you ever used KONOS? How do you incorporate it into your homeschool? Leave a comment!
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There's No Place Like Home 
We used Konos last year, and I really did enjoy the program. It is overwhelming at first glance, but once you figure out how it is organized, it is pretty easy to lesson plan from. I would spend maybe an hour every couple of weeks listing out the activities we wanted to do each day for the next couple of weeks. We did Konos activities every day. We got our core work done in the morning, and then in the afternoon did the hands on projects/activities.
One huge pro is the cost- it has to be one of the cheapest home school curricula out there. We have a great public library, so we had access to just about everything. However, my Konos is pretty outdated, so many of the books on the book lists were no longer available, so I did spend a lot of time researching other books to fit in with what we were studying.
While I really did enjoy the program and would recommend it to anybody wanting to incorporate unit studies, we ended up switching back to Sonlight this year. We may go back to Konos, but in the end I didn’t like how disjointed the units were- I didn’t like that we jumped around from friction, to Indians, to Renaissance, to electricity. Even though I liked each individual unit, they didn’t flow together, and in the end I decided I wanted to go back to a curriculum that had a year long theme that connected. I realize some people may find that a silly reason, but that is what I felt most comfortable doing with our home school for the time being.
Nevertheless, I really do think that Konos is a fabulous program. The hands on activities are wonderful and a ton of fun. It was a great year with the program, and like I said, I may end up going back to it. If you are debating whether or not to try it, I say give it a year and see what happens!
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I can see what you mean about the flow. Some people may definitely not like that. I don’t mind, though, because I tend to think of homeschooling as a feast. It’s my job to introduce them to lots of interesting subjects so that they can take what appeals to them most and run with it. 🙂
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I love KONOS. We have used it on & off since I started homeschooling in 2009! Each time I would learn new ways and get more comfortable being more flexible with the curriculum. You have inspired me yet again. Once my 6 broke into these age groups I was lost again. This post give some great insight as to how to make multiple ages work, spanning across the grades. Thank you!! One thing I wonder, how much time do you set aside to plan, and how often?
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I was wondering, do you use Konos’ HOW for your teens? Or find ways to stretch the 3 original volumes to accommodate your olders?
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I’ve been tweaking the original volumes, and it works beautifully.
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Hi Shelley, loved this article. I am thinking of getting Volume I to use with my 15 year old and almost 13 year old. Some people have said that Volume I is for younger children—just wanted to confirm that you have been able to use this volume with your high-schoolers?
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All of the volumes are listed as being for K through 9th, but with just a bit of tweaking, both volumes one and two can easily be used with high schoolers. (I haven’t used volume 3, yet)
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