As I mentioned in this post, a few months ago, I stumbled across @monsonschoolhouse on instagram. If you don’t follow her, go check her out! My boys go to public school and we love their school, but I have been fascinated by how Mikael runs her little home schoolhouse. Following her has been so inspiring.
I was especially intrigued by the curriculum that she uses from The Good and the Beautiful.
So I thought to myself, why not do a little school at home this summer? So that’s what we have been doing. I bought some of The Good and the Beautiful curriculum and we’ve been spending a couple of hours in the morning doing our little school.
Doing this little home school for the summer has been really fun. I love that I get to be the kids’ teacher and we get to learn together. I love that I feel like I am helping to fill their minds with good and beautiful things. I sit down, and spend a good 2 hours each morning, just focused on the kids. The kids love it too.
At the end of June, we finished our first science unit – The Solar System. We really enjoyed learning details about the universe. Going star gazing on our campouts was extra fun and exciting because we had been learning about the stars and planets.
Pioneer Unit
At the beginning of July, we started our next unit for our little summer school: The Latter-day Saint Pioneers. This unit was compiled/created and inspired by Mikael of @monsonschoolhouse . She was so nice to share the curriculum that she put together. You can find her PDF here. The curriculum that she put together was the foundation and jumping off point for our unit.
We absolutely loved doing this unit and even though I shared all the details on my Instagram account, I thought I would share them here on my blog as well so everything is all together and easier to find and share if you want to.
So let’s dive into the details…
I felt led by the Spirit
Something that was interesting about this unit is how much I felt guided by the Spirit. I started the unit thinking that I would include certain aspects of Mikael’s curriculum (like the journaling) and although I did still include those a little bit, the Spirit led me in a different direction that would be better geared for my particular kids’ ages (8, 6, 4, 2).
I felt inspired to include a lot of pretend play in our unit lessons. The pretend play method of teaching this unit was perfect for my kids. And it was also perfect for me because doing so much pretend play just made it all feel so fun and magical.
What was interesting and exciting to me was that for many of the lessons, I would be prepping the night before by reading the assigned chapter (from this book) and I would just have these ideas come to my mind of how I we could “act out” some of the historical events and lifestyle from the time period.
These ideas were usually the bigger picture and a little fuzzy. It wasn’t usually until the next morning when I would have ideas pop into my mind that filled in the details. My husband also had ideas come to his mind that he would share with me and I was able to incorporate those as well.
Amazingly, the large majority of the time, I would just happen to already have things around the house that worked well enough for the pretend play ideas.
I also kept a running list of ideas that I had brainstormed and wanted to find a way to fit into the unit.
Was it all rainbows and unicorns?
Of course, my kids are still kids. It wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns. Its not like we experienced complete and total peace for 2 hours every single morning and never any complaining or contention. We’re all still human.
But something that I loved about this unit was that I was able to have clarity and I could just see those bad mood moments for what they really are – just some gray clouds. The sky wasn’t gray. The sky was still blue. The sky is always blue. But sometimes gray clouds cover the blue sky for a brief time.
And that’s ok. That’s part of life. As long as we don’t give up and think that it’s not worth it because the sky is gray. I hope that makes sense like it does in my head. haha.
The Spirit of Elijah brought the magic
But what is it that made this unit so magical? It was the Spirit of Elijah. I could feel it strongly. And I know that my kids could feel it as well. One seemingly insignificant example of this is something that I noticed with my 8 year old son.
He hates wearing dressy clothes.
He will wear those clothes for 3 hours of church once a week and if he absolutely has to for a family photo shoot or something, but he’s not happy about it and he is the first one to change after we get back home. There have been countless battles between me and him over the years over this topic.
But do you know what’s interesting? When I first told him that we would be dressing up everyday during our unit, he rolled his eyes and started to complain and say that he didn’t want to. I explained that he didn’t have to, but he would be missing out on some of the fun and full experience if he chose not to.
What I found to be really fascinating was that after this first day, he didn’t complain about it anymore. He wore those “uncomfortable” dressy clothes (long sleeves and long pants in the middle of July!) every single morning (16 days) for 2+ hours with very minimal complaining.
That was a miracle.
Of course, I can’t prove this, but my personal feelings are that he willingly dressed up like a pioneer every morning and wore those “uncomfortable clothes” because he felt the Spirit of Elijah. When he was dressed up and playing the part, he felt close to his ancestors. And that feeling trumped his desire to be “comfortable.”
Preparing for the unit
In preparing for this unit, I did a lot of family history research and reading about my pioneer ancestors (the books that my grandma compiled were extra helpful for this). I have always known that I have ancestors that crossed the plains with the pioneers but I didn’t know much about them.
In my research, I discovered that I have about 100 ancestors (this includes the parents and children) that crossed the plains with pioneer companies between the years 1846 – 1864.
I chose an ancestor for each of my kids to represent as we “crossed the plains” during this unit.
Landon crossed the plains as Charles Alfred Harper Sr. (his great-great-great-great grandfather, through my dad, and Grandpa Marchant’s line). I picked Charles for Landon because Landon’s middle name is Harper and I thought it would be a neat way for him to connect with one of his namesakes (and for us all to get a better idea of why we picked the middle name, Harper, for him…because, I honestly don’t know why we picked it, we mostly just liked the name and it was a family name. haha)
Porter crossed as Stephen Markham (his great-great-great-great grandfather, through my mom and Grandpa Hall’s line). I picked Stephen Markham for Porter because Stephen Markham was one of Joseph Smith’s body guards and the name Porter means “gatekeeper” or “doorkeeper”. I interpret that in the same way as “guard”.
Evelyn crossed the plains as Lydia Lidiard Johnson Marchant (her great-great-great-great grandmother, through my dad and Grandpa Marchant’s line). I chose Lydia for Evelyn because I feel a connection to the name Lydia. Also, Lydia was a small woman. I don’t know how tall she was, but she was around 100 lbs. I’m guessing that she was about the same size as me.
Roxanne crossed as Mary Jane Anthony Thomas (her great-great-great-great grandmother, through my dad and Grandma Marchant’s (the Hawkins) line). And I chose Mary Jane for Roxanne because Jane is in her name, and also because she had the gift of healing, which I feel is appropriate to the name Jane (in my personal experience) and to Roxanne (remember, I feel that Roxanne and Jane Elizabeth Clayton were a couple of the angels that helped me through my driving fears and to heal that part of me).
Here are some links to resources that helped me to find and learn more about my pioneer ancestors:
Church History Library Catalog – once you know who your pioneer ancestors are, you can search this database to see if there are any documents about them at the Church History Library. That is how I discovered Charles Alfred Harper’s journal. 🙂
BYU Special Collections Early Mormon Missionary Diaries –
This is also great resource that I just found as I was writing this post that helps you to know how to find your pioneer ancestors. I did all of these things as well.
If you have any questions about finding information on your ancestors, I’d be happy to help, although I am not an expert. 🙂
Dressing up
Pioneer music
Documenting our journey
As we started the unit, and felt the Spirit of Elijah rush in, I knew that I wanted to figure out a way to document this experience so that we could look back on it and remember what we learned and what we felt. I decided to do this through making a little video everyday.
I would tape my phone to the back of a chair (yes… tape. haha. I should probably get a tripod at some point) and then just let it record during the inside portion of our lesson. When we went outside, either I would hold my phone to do the filming, or I would tape my phone to our deck post.
I know, real fancy and professional. haha. Then I would just cut out clips and edit the video on the iMovie app on my phone. Super easy.
Ok… now for the day by day details…
For quick reference, here are the links:
