3 Great Pursuits / 3 Core Subjects

Long before any teaching takes place we must decide what we want to accomplish.  Are we preparing our children for Jeopardy, or will their education enhance their future lives outside of academia?  We believe the sole purpose of education should be to prepare children for the adult world.  So what subjects and skills are crucial to the adult world?  The things that generally affect our happiness the most are our faith, family, and finances.  These three great pursuits are what largely drive adults.  Rightously pursued, they bring us tremendous joy and fulfillment, but the reverse is also true.  Lost faith, broken families, and financial hardship are the greatest causes of depression and grief.  It was with these three lifelong pursuits in mind that Blue Manor designed a curriculum to help parents raise Godly children who will one day build strong families and lasting wealth.  We accomplished this by focusing in on our three core subjects: Physical, Intellectual, and Spiritual Development.  These subjects provide the foundation for unlimited success.  These core subjects give children the best possible chance to achieve the three great pursuits.  Physical development teaches a child to be the master of his body and not the other way around.  Your children should learn how to increase their strength and endurance, adopt habits of healthy diet and exercise, and possess basic medical skills.  They must come to understand that they are the primary guardians of their own health, not their doctors.  Intellectual development is a combination of increasing your children’s ability to think and increasing their overall topical knowledge.  In other words, they must have enough information to make rational decisions as well as the ability to properly analyze the information.  There are many types of thought: critical, objective, strategic, creative, and several others.  If your child can master them all he will be wise beyond his years.  However, the greatest of the core subjects is spiritual development.  How dangerous is a wicked man of superior strength and intellect?  If your children learn nothing else, let them learn to fear the Lord, to speak the truth, to work for their livings, and to take care of those in need.  Let spiritual development take priority over the other subjects.  As you teach, never forget the Three Great Pursuits and the Three Core Subjects.  They are the key to an elite education.

Essential Material

Only essential material should be taught.  For example, children do not need to know how the Pilgrims dressed, how they talked, the names of the ships the travelled on, or what time they went to bed.  What makes the Pilgrims historically noteworthy is why they left England, the Mayflower Compact, and Thanksgiving.  To teach any more than this is a waste of the students’ time and energy.  Very few graphic designs, silly pictures, and cartoons are included in our curriculum.  Those are meant to entertain, not educate.  Instead of drawing attention to the essential information, they serve as distractions.  If you want to teach a color, show only the color.  By including dozens of cartoons, the student is drawn first to the active figures and secondarily to the colors.  In fact, a very young child might not even make a connection.  When they should be seeing blue, green, or red, they may only see lots of silly cartoon characters.  This drastically slows the learning process.  Material should be practical for occupations other than that of a Jeopardy contestant.  Our curriculum covers manners, speaking, medical basics, artistic skills, personal finance, common skills, agriculture, livestock, family building, etc.

Just as nonessential material can distract from the learning process, nonessential activities can do the same.  Although it is fun to dress up like a Pilgrim, that does not mean it is a productive way to teach or learn.  Often students become so preoccupied with the game and its rules and strategies that they lose sight of the material they are supposed to be learning.   For instance, a student who is learning about the Pilgrims does not need to make “Pilgrim” popsicle stick people, color pictures of Pilgrims, or do “Pilgrim” word puzzles.  This drastically extends and over-complicates the learning process.  Blue Manor’s Christian curriculum is simple.  The learning activities and methods are straightforward and repetitive, allowing the student to focus exclusively on the material, instead of on new activities.  Now don’t think that because our curriculum is focused that it is not fun to learn.  Children naturally love to learn new things.  The reason children lose interest in education is that irrelevant subjects are often exhausted to the extreme and schools enjoy a complete monopoly over children’s precious time.  Our curriculum keeps the lessons short and sweet - keeping the material interesting and allowing the maximum amount of play time.

Layer by Layer

Our subjects are taught in layers according to the student’s ability, not blocks according to the student’s age.  Subjects are often taught in blocks.  Take a class like chemistry.  For years, you learn nothing about chemistry and then in a short period of time you are introduced to an enormous amount of information about the subject.  After completing a final exam, you rarely if ever see it again. This is the worst possible way to teach subjects.  First the student has no idea about chemistry, then he is overwhelmed and learns much more than necessary, and then he moves on to the next unfamiliar block of information, forgetting all about chemistry.  For this reason, our curriculum teaches in layers.  Take World History, for example:  In the first layer you learn about the twenty most influential people in history, next about the major empires of the world, and then about the major events in the world.  When a student passes a level, he learns that he has not passed a subject.  He has merely added a layer of that subject knowledge.  Instead of moving on, the next level adds another layer.  This is the best way to learn.  Very early on the student gains an awareness of the subject, he is never overwhelmed, and he never moves on and forgets all about the subject.  He is forced to constantly review the previous material, while continuously introducing new material.

Our curriculum teaches according to the individual student’s ability, not his age.   We do not put age group suggestions on any of our curricula.  After all, some students can read by age two or three, while others can’t read until they are six.  So how can a curriculum manufacturer suggest an age group?  In our curriculum, a student starts with Level One and as soon as he passes the material he moves on regardless of his age.

Blue Manor: Christian Preschool Curriculum Set:

LEVEL ONE SAMPLE PAGES