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Most learning that lasts is interdisciplinary in nature. This is accomplished by taking a whole unit--like North American Indians, owls, ancient Olympics, or Medieval times--and approaching it in a general, unified way. Integrating the various subject matter provides genuine motivation to learn, encourages better recall, and is more interesting. Isolated subjects usually fail to interest the child, fail to reinforce each other and fail to provide any reason for learning. In fact, by teaching isolated subjects, the child is more easily distracted from real learning. Unified themes excite the child and maximize teaching efforts. Because the goal is to train our children, KONOS authors Jessica Hulcy and Carole Thaxton designed the curriculum around the Godly character traits they desired to see their children develop. All of the resources and activities were chosen to reinforce each of these traits. Therefore, all the subject-matter (Bible, art, music, language arts, science, social studies, health and safety, writing, and practical living) is integrated around a character trait theme. Each theme is reinforced by activities using different subjects. For example, with the theme of Patience, we baked bread (math, practical living), made baker's hats (craft, math), studied the life of Jacob (reading, history), experimented with yeast (science), searched the Bible for references to bread (Bible), and studied homophones like "knead/need," "flour/ flower," "whole/hole," "bread/bred," and "sew/so" (language arts).
The KONOS timeline is part of this integrated learning model; instead of studying chronologically, elementary KONOS students learn the stories of real people as they relate to the unit theme, cut out the colorful detailed figure and mount it on the appropriate lie. The timeline is an amazing graphic organizer and kids 'see' the Big Picture as they work with the abstract concept of time in a concrete way. Later, when students are more developmentally ready to think in chronological, linear terms, the people stories they already know will become the 'pegs' on which to hang chronological world history.
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