I was up early this morning reading through Dr. Rose’s A Guide to American Christian Education (again!). My struggle with PA has been that I understood it in part but I didn’t really understand how everything fit together. Each subject seemed disconnected to me. Well, this morning it all made sense.

The Principle Approach method of American Christian Education is fantastic for many reasons, but the one I’m addressing is the issue I had of teaching multiple grades and doing it in such a way that they could see how everything in life is interconnected (like with a unit study). What I realized as I was reading the Geography section (by Katherine Dang) is that it made sense that we go from whole to parts. That means we go from the general to the specific, from the principle to the subject and the different ages get different “parts.” Let me explain.

For example, each year in geography you move from universe to solar system to Earth to parts of Earth, etc. So as the child gets older he gets these same concepts with more complicated “parts,” while the younger kids gets more of the basic idea. Maybe this is no big deal to you but to me this is HUGE! Now I get it. I can teach PA method to all ages together because we cover the same links, the same basic principles, the same basic concepts each year. We just use different examples, highlight different topics/people and emphasize different points. So you go from whole to parts each year and from whole to parts from year to year, building on what you already know and growing from there.

That’s why you don’t have to create a unit study. Everything makes sense when reasoning from whole to parts, and then you see where it fits on the Chain of Christianity. You don’t have to connect it all together. Your child learns to reason effectively from the Word of God and can make sense of all of it because he understands how it all fits into God’s Providential HISstory. That is the reason for FACE’s historical emphasis. (For more details specific to homeschooling and teaching multiple grades, see Rose’s book on pp. 126-127.)

Now I feel confident I can create my own lesson plans. I understand the method of creating plans for multiple ages and I know how to create them with the help of Dr. Rose’s book. I can hardly wait to get started!

P.s. the next day I found all of these things addressed in Rose’s book in the homeschool section: teaching multiple grades, etc. Man, I felt kind of stupid but my DH, who is definitely a “glass-half-full” kind of guy, offered me some fresh perspective. He says I can look at it two ways: 1) you are so smart you still figured it out on your own, or 2) you read it before and just filed it away for a time when you can use it. He’s so good for me. So, I won’t feel dumb, I will just bask in the sunshine of my new understanding.