Homeschool Tutorial and Enrichment '08-'09

The Life Garden™ is a home-school tutoring and enrichment activities program serving children from the ages of 3 to 19. The Garden utilizes a five-stage methodology in its approach to educating students. The successive stages of that methodology are intended to produce:

Fun-loving
Eager
Respectful
Tenacious
Inquisitive
Limitless
Energetic

Secure
Optimistic
Interdependent
Learners
…within preschool-age children.

Students
Encouraged to
Explore,
Discern,
Love,
Initiate and
Nurture
Good
…out of our elementary-age children.

Students
Actively
Pursuing a
Life that
Initiates and
Nurtures
Good
…out of our junior high-age children.

Happy
Ambitious
Respectful
Virtuous
Educated
Succeeding
Teens
…out of our senior high-age children.

The Life Garden™ provides parents with the small group, self-paced, holistic education alternative in which children thrive. Each small academic group of 4-6 students (called a “grove”) is assigned to a teacher-mentor (called a “gardener”) of the same gender. This specific gardener is responsible for the academic training of his grove for 4 hours out of a regular day. He utilizes materials specifically designed for self-paced study, such as Mortenson Math, SRA, Spelling Power, Sonlight, etc. Our gardeners seek to make lessons as interdisciplinary, interactive and hands-on as possible to speak to the various learning styles of our students.

For the balance of the day, each grove combines with four other groves (no more than 30 students total, collectively referred to as an “orchard”) to participate in service learning, chores, recreation or one of the arts. For example, on Tuesday and Thursday mornings we volunteer at the Glover Family Farm, a beautiful 43-acre organic facility located in South Fulton County (this particular activity also serves as the lab portion of our Science curriculum). Other afternoons we may paint or draw or bring teachers in to provide music, dance or karate lessons. We also look for opportunities to volunteer at local nonprofit facilities. And everyday we get in a good dose of exercise. Our desire is to provide students with a fully enriched experience.

Throughout the day, gardeners look for opportunities to impart wisdom regarding the specific character virtue that is our focus for that month. Each week there is at least one activity or project that requires students’ demonstration of the principles emphasized thus far that year. As an organization, KCINC believes that youth must be taught the principles of private and public maturity, and then held accountable to them. We accomplish this by maintaining an environment where virtues are regularly discussed, practiced and rewarded (see The Life Garden™ Discipline Strategy).

The Life Garden™ functions on a school-year schedule of generally 6 weeks-on and 1 week-off, with a summer break of 13 weeks, two of which are used for a service learning trip for students 12 and older. Summer services are provided based upon gardeners’ availability. We provide services from 8am to 4pm, Monday thru Friday. Most materials and field-trip fees are included. Parents provide lunch daily and transportation to and from our meeting place for that day.

The Life Garden™ is unique in a very significant way. We seek to promote the family as the primary learning institution in a child’s life. Parents are encouraged to utilize our services only to the extent necessary for them to provide a well-rounded home-school experience for their children. For some parents, that means utilizing only our half-day tutoring services. For others, it means availing themselves of only the enrichment activities we provide. For still others who have to work 6 hours per day or more, it means accessing the entire day’s program. From these parents we require at least 40 hours of volunteer time during the school year. Our greatest delight is to see parents take off to conduct their own one-on-one fieldtrips with their children. We believe that kids learn to value what their parents value for them. So the more time they can spend with loving parents, the better.

The Life Garden™ is also unique in that its gardeners (at grove capacity) typically teach for only half a day. For the remainder of the day they are freed to pursue other missional endeavors. This allows gardeners to remain fresh and fulfilled in the work they do with kids. It also allows students to learn up-close that regardless of the work one does to provide for her family, she must also make time to pursue those other things that help to fulfill a greater purpose for being.

The Life Garden™ is a fantastically innovative program designed to help parents grow their children into healthy, wholesome, balanced, intelligent and mature adults, committed to making positive contributions to the world by cultivating them from the inside-out.