Far Above Rubies

We purchased this unit study last year.  It just wasn’t a fit for us.  Now my friend who also purchased it for her daughter at the same time, loves it.  So, this is a subjective thing.

What we had issues with is that it is very open ended.  Each unit has a verse as it’s focus and then listed activities under different subject headings for each unit.  You need to figure out how many of these activities you need to do to earn a certain number of credits.  There is alot of research activities with these units. 

We travel alot and found that it was very difficult to have to research a topic on the road.  Even when we were home, I found that she had to be on the internet too much to do the research research because our library didn’t have alot of the information or if they did we could not check it out. 

Maybe it’s just us.  It’s a great idea.  If you have a very organized and motivated child, then maybe this would be good.  But it was just too open ended for us.  Unit studies just don’t work too well for us.  There are times when my children would go on a rabbit trail after reading something and then they would check out alot of books on the subject and learn alot, but it was all motivated and inspired by them.  That’s the only way I’ve seen that type of “connected study” work in our home, when they make their own connections. 

I would really recommend downloading a sample of FAR and seeing if it would work for you.  I hope this is somewhat helpful for you.  I really wanted to make this work for us–I liked the concept, but we needed something a little more planned and guided.

Blessings,

Betty