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!
