Friends of Moor House Academy,

With everything going on in this world, many think that the future for our children depends wholly on the next election. Yet, real sustainable change really begins and ends in the home. We feel it is vital that our children receive a whole education, preparing both their hearts and their minds for their future. Which not only means educating them academically, but strengthen their moral foundation and compass, as part of that education. For this reason we at Moor House Academy always strive to offer the highest quality resources in assisting you in raising and educating your children.  Many of these resources we offer through our own store. However, whenever we come across other great resource that we know can benefit you as parents in this journey, we are eager to share those resources with you.

We are so excited to share with you about a new company– Shine Brite Education. This company shares our values and goals for helping build happy sustainable families.  With all this great technology at our fingertips, we want to utilize it as a tool to help educate our children.  Shine Brite is a fun, entertaining, and interactive Christian based educational website for children and their families. This is a subscription based program for the affordable price of $7.99 a month, or save with an annual subscription of 64.99 (an annual savings of $30.89)! However, if you click on our link you can have An Additional Two Months FREE! A total savings of $46.87

What do you receive with your subscription?  Each member of the family gets to create their own custom Avitar to journey with them as they  learn principles of success and reinforce Christian values, while also being introduced to great people throughout history, all in a fun way through interactive stories and games. Through completing the stories and games the children can earn points which allow them to purchase virtual items in the store to enrich their profile. Also included in the subscription package  is a Parents Area with resources to help drive these lessons home. This includes  fun Shine Brite Night lessons (similar to FHE) for the families, monthly podcast for parents, and awards programs for children. The great thing is that they are always adding new stories and new resources!

You and your children will love the fresh clean and lovable characters in the animations, in stories and games that do not grow old for them.

We invite you to click on our link to receive a 7 Day Free Trial as well as an Additional Two Months Free added to your first year's subscription.

To get your two FREE Bonus Months you must use this coupon code at check out--

COUPON CODE: SB-MHAcademy

We know your children will thank you for Shine Brite!

Mahalo,
Donna Goff and Julia Groves

I created and use a Book of Centuries in our home and my cottage school class "Leap into the Love of Learning." Today, we created our Book of Centuries for the school year. To me, this approach can help bring history to life!  It is hands on! When we have larger groups we even add another step- what I call "Stepping into Character" and "New Reporter."This is where the student comes as a character of history to teach others about them. When the person being reported on is evil, the children can be a reporter telling about the evil person.

I recently changed the pages of the Book of Centuries to be a one page spread instead of a two page spread. I printed the Time/ Place grids on to card stock.  Each card stock page becomes an index page and content referenced on the index page is expanded and placed behind that page. We created our own tabs- Green for Creation- 1 AD; Deep Burgundy Red for the Birth of Christianity, the Apostasy, and Medieval times- 1 AD-1500 AD; Blue for the Age of Exploration and Discovery 1500- 1800 AD; and Yellow for the Fullness of Time- 1800 into the future. 

When we begin the Book of Centuries, we have the children add themselves, their parents, when their parents married, when their brothers and sisters were born. I want children to grasp what history is and they are part of history.

Once the children see themselves as part of history, we study McConkie's book and the children create a page for each day of the creation.  We use McConkie because it is a restored Gospel view, and is not as limited as the view promoted through General Christian curriculum presently available. After that, they can more clearly understand what the scriptures say and do not say about the creation. My students are then prepared to further research and learn more about the 36 Noble Men and Women from church history, nine artists; nine musicians; 36 mathematicians, explorers, inventors, scientists;  36 statesmen; and nine poets found in the Power of an Hour that we study each year, then add them to their Book of Centuries. Each child's Book of Centuries will be a treasure of their own making.

Helpful Resources mentioned above:

Book of Centuries-  http://store.moorhouseacademy.org/p/5/binders

Power of an Hour- http://store.moorhouseacademy.org/p/2/the-power-of-an-hour-old-testamentancient-times

Leap Into the Love of Learning Class http://store.moorhouseacademy.org/p/14/leap-into-the-love-of-learning-class

Due to a high profile Latter-day Saint running for President of the United States, there has been much in the news and on blog about what Latter-day Saints believe.

I have even been told that Latter-day Saints do not believe in the same Jesus as other Christians. I believe we do believe in the same Jesus, but without the continuing light of revelation, many only see part of who He is and what His teachings were about.  With less truth available, with revelation closed to them, they simply come to different conclusions. However, even within the covers of the Bible, alone, one must take all that was revealed on a given doctrine, and not just pick, and choose.  For if one does take points out of context then they only see part of a picture.

I see in the Bible that the Father spoke from Heaven while Jesus was being baptized. I also see Him bidding his followers to be one, even as He is one with the Father. Then there is the first martyr, Stephen, he was stoned for saying he saw Jesus on the right hand of the father. Oh, and Moses spoke with God Face to Face. No, I do not think Jesus was throwing his voice as a ventriloquist. I believe it was the Father's voice. Nor do I think he wanted his followers to climb inside each other, but he did want us to be one in heart-- unified.  I do not for a moment believe that Stephen was seeing double.  He was stoned for what he said he saw.  Oh, and Moses, yes, I think he saw what he said he saw.

I read Elder Holland's presentation that he gave at Harvard in March of this year-  "Mormonism 101." Here is a link to read that talk.  I think I will read it aloud and discuss it with my youth tomorrow. 
http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/harvard-elder-holland-mormonism-remarks

Anchored in the Gospel and Moored to the Classics!

I feel that it is important for all of us could be better versed in the Bible, and in all God's revealed word.  That is why I love that Moor House Academy's programs are anchored to the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ and are moored to the classics, those inspired writings of mankind. This gives me, my family, moms, homeschool children, and other children using Moor House Academy an easy to use resources that help move us through each of the four standard works. This can all happen before seminary age, so that seminary becomes a second witness.

Power of an Hour- A Four Year LDS Based Curriculum

We could have divided history up into seven dispensations- Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Meridian of Time, Fullness of Times, and Millennium. We chose instead to create a four year cycle to dovetail with the four standard works, which moves from past, through the present, and the future.  I feel it is important that families take the time to listen to and discuss conference talks, build a Gospel vocabulary, learn about noble people from church history, and memorize scripture mastery verses, as well. 

Our Leap into the Love of Learning Class incorporates the Power of an Hour into a cottage school setting.

Dear Friends,

Moor House Academy (MHA)was founded 16 August 2002! We have been serving the homeschool community for a decade! 

On 16 August 2002, I went to the city offices and made it official that day. That night we had a well attended information and enrollment night. Between that night and the day classes began others contacted me and joined our autumn class. Classes began in American Fork and Salt Lake beginning the day after Labor Day 2002.  Life changes soon came to our American Fork host and we moved classes to the Harral home in Highland the rest of the year. 

MHA was a family school serving my children and families with: Family Scholars (Core Phase/children up to 8), Aspiring Scholars (Love of learning/ children 8-12), Young Scholars (Scholars/youth 12-18) and their parents.  We started off with 65 in our live classes: children, parents, and 20 young scholars. We also had online Young Scholar and adult classes.  

I chuckle when I think of my first day in front of 20 young scholars.  For a moment I mildly panicked and thought, "What on earth have you done? There are 20!"  Then I stepped from fear and into a wonderful year with a group of inspiring youth.  Their insights and comments in class seemed at times beyond their years and I often went home feeling humbled. We all learned so a lot that year.

In 2002, technology for schools was pretty limited. However, we had one awesome dad, Aaron Mildenstein, stepped forward and offer to build a website for us for free.  I was blown away.  He said he wanted to make sure it was there when his children grew up. That same week my computer crashed.  I came up stairs wondering, "Now what will I do?" Just as I hit the top step, someone came to the door. It was my husband's childhood friend, Stan.  I told him what had just happened.  He said, "No problem, I will have my guy build you a state of the art computer and you can pay me later. Now I am several computers later and I must say technology is just beginning to catch up with our vision!  I kind of burn out computers! 

  In the past few years many of my own children and many of my earlier students served missions and the married and began families of their own.It is wonderful to see these youth as adults!

Over the past decade we have created many resources for families and had many interesting classes-- our original classes (2002), Scholar Portfolios (2002), Spring/Summer Love of Learning class (2005), Sons of Valor (2006), Princess Academies (2006), Girls' Spring into College class (2006), Journey to Zion (2008), Hope Chest Journey (2009), Art: The Gateway to  Love of Learning (2010), Power of and Hour (2010), Sewing classes (2010), and more.

This fall, we are kicking off our 10th anniversary year and celebrating with a Leap Into the Love of Learning class in my home three days a week. I am team teaching this class with my oldest daughter. We are excited about this class and what we will be doing this year.  Lots of wonderful things to inspire, expose, experiment and explore. In December, we will change up the pace with a Christ Centered Christmas curriculum and a focus on craftsmanship and service. Natural walks through the seasons, classics, art, spelling, music, grammar, science, history, world geography, US geography, beginning Hebrew, poetry, and much more.

MHA is built on a one room school house or cottage school model, and not a age/grade factory model. We use contextual learning, rather than sequential rote learning. We find this contextual, engaging, hands-on-approach works well for children. 

Many public and private schools are factory like and sequential, even in most areas where sequence does not matter.  They have divided up and created an artificial scope, sequence with accompanying tests. When children learn bits and pieces of information and memorize for a test, they can become academic hoop jumpers. Rather than learners with skills they can apply, they often lose what they learned within a few weeks.  For example, the children that are taught spelling lists, but not the rules. They memorize the words for a test, but cannot remember them three weeks later. So, I wanted to create something that helped children learn and apply.

Being contextual, instead of sequential, there is no behind and no ahead, only breadth and depth! Students can join classes at any point or the process.  Some students may appear to be doing fine where they are right now.  However, in October, or November they may need a change. Please contact us if you are interested and please share if you have a friend who would be interested.

What if you live at a distance and would like to Leap into the Love of Learning with your own children, or perhaps start your own class?  We will have our resources available online  and we will be doing monthly support available. To keep updated, please join us on Facebook and please subscribe to the "Moor House Gazette" under Categories in the side bar.

Again, Happy Anniversary to Moor House Academy!

I love my 13 year old. She has been setting her own goals and working on them. Reading her book of Mormon again and working on her own personal progress. My sweet daughter and I discussed requirement #2 for Faith, in her personal Progress book-- "With a mother, grandmother, or leader discuss the qualities a woman needs in order to teach her children faith and to base their decisions on gospel truths. How can these principles help you in your life today, and help you prepare to be a faithful woman, wife, and mother?"