Concluding a Konos unit, rather than letting it just fade away, is an important part of your study. Children benefit greatly from reading and experiences, but need also to retain and master the information. They need a chance to digest what they just learned and fit it into the framework of what they already know. Plan a closure when you plan your unit.

There are a variety of ways to crystallize and close a unit. You don't have to use tests or flash cards, although they can certainly be used occasionally. Here are some wrap-ups we have used.

SHOW AND TELL. (also known as NARRATION to Charlotte Mason fans) The simplest way to test knowledge is to let children explain what they have learned. Fathers and grandparents usually make willing audiences, and children can teach each other. If the children have made models of something they have studied, they can show their knowledge by explaining them to someone else. Our children recently made telegraphs, buzzers, and a motor, and were so excited about them they explained them to their dad and all their friends, reinforcing their knowledge as well as passing on some information to others. We have found that the teacher usually retains more than the student.

WRITING PROJECTS. A research paper can provide an overall wrap-up for a unit, but a variety of creative writing projects can work equally well. While studying plants, one daughter wrote and illustrated a story called "Dana Dandelion," a fictional account of a dandelion's life and family history. The story and pictures revealed her knowledge of the subject. While studying the Civil War, the girls wrote newspaper accounts of a battle, and while studying Kings and Queens, they each wrote and performed a ballad.

GAMES. Games are one of our family’s favorite ways to test and review knowledge. Sometimes, there is a ready-made game that provides good review. We have found Aristoplay’s games are frequently good for this. We have also closed units with competitions modeled after Jeopardy and Trivial Pursuit. The children like to make up their own games. They usually use one of our other games and its board as a starting place. For example, Aristoplay's Knights and Castles became our electricity unit's Sparks and Shocks. We let the children make up the questions and the rules. They usually make up more difficult question than I would have. They review, learn new information, and go back to the game later for more reinforcement that they think of as fun.

Concentration or Memory style games are an easy way to test specific knowledge such as parts of the body and their functions, duties of each branch of the government, vocabulary words, etc. For example, the children wrote down the duties of the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Executive Branch, and the Judicial Branch. We laminated them with contact paper, cut them apart, and mixed them up. We then matched the duties to each branch. This can be played competitively as a race, or individually, with or without timing it. We keep our game pieces in labeled, zippered plastic bags with our other games, and the children play them for fun well after we have concluded the unit. Painless review!

We also use a matching style game to review historical names and dates. I give the children a stack of cards with dates and a stack of cards with the corresponding historical events or people. We usually don't memorize dates as we study a unit, but they can put things in the proper order if they know the history, then line up the dates to match. This provides a good review and promotes reasoning skills. This has worked especially well for us when studying wars.

DRAMATIZATIONS. We finalized our Civil War unit with a field day with friends. We all dressed in period costume and enjoyed a plantation luncheon and dance, held a slave auction, dramatized an escape on the Underground Railroad, performed a readers' theater, and reenacted a battle. What a fun way to reinforce the details of the time and get a sense of the time period! Children, parents, and grandparents all regarded this as highlight of our year. Other enjoyable unit wrap-ups have been a medieval feast, a frontier "bee", a Thanksgiving celebration, and a dramatization of a sacrifice in a life-sized model of the Tabernacle.

Not all dramatizations need to be elaborate or with a group. The children have dramatized pollination, flying on an airplane, and the three types of rocks! They do all the work on these themselves and love showing us the performances.

PROJECTS. Building a project is often a good way to wrap-up a unit. We have used this mostly for science units, although it is not restricted to them. The children made steam boats and raced them for our unit on the Industrial Revolution and made models of a suspension bridge and a lock for the Great Feats unit. Some non-science projects we have done are a relief map of the United States showing the major routes of westward expansion and a cardboard model of the Tabernacle. We usually try to time a polished project with our support group project fair.

SCRAPBOOKS. We have just started this and are enjoying it tremendously. I have always made yearly family scrapbooks of our Konos activities, and the children enjoy looking at them, which does provide review. Now that they are older, they are making their own books, complete with journal entries. This provides great review and takes care of a good part of our portfolio.

TIMELINE ACTIVITIES. We almost always use the Konos timeline to review at the end of a unit. A favorite activity is to play "Who Am I?" with the figures. The child who shares the most information gets to put the figure on the wall. We also use the timeline to look for patterns in history, and to see how events in the past may have influenced the events we just studied.

As you can see, concluding your Konos units can be fun. But whether it is or not, it is necessary to retain and internalize the new information. It also neatly wraps up the unit, allowing you to begin a new unit without loose ends from the last one slowly fading away.

Written by: Sue Booth Bogdan WV Konos Representative

1210 Greenmont Circle

Vienna, WV 26105

Copyright 2000 Susan F. Booth