Skyscraper EducationTM
Mastery, Resilience, and Wonder in Today's Schools

Mastery - Resilience - Wonder
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What do these three words have in common? How do they fit together?
What do they mean to those of you who are charged with providing the very best education for children and young adults?
Parents have observed in many pre-school children their resilience to master a new skill and the wonder on their faces when they succeed. Parents desire mastery, resilience and wonder to continue in school.

What do students want? They want their wonder of curiosity and creativity to be utilized. They do not initially realize that wonder creates resilience which goes on to create mastery of content. But what do educators want? Isn't it the same thing? Mastery, resilience and wonder?

Parents, students and educators can all work together to create the environment necessary for all three components to flourish.
Whether your school is public, private, charter or in the home, mastery, resilience and wonder are essential. Crazy Simple Education has been working with Mr. W. to support they key elements with Skyscraper EducationTM. Six inventions were combined to create skyscrapers; each has a powerful analogy for Mastery, Resilience and Wonder in the education arena.

Inventions for Mastery

Steel Frame:
The key concepts written for each subject and each grade level.

Our books like How to Create a Perfect School and How to Create a Perfect Home School provide detailed explanations on implementing these "inventions" in the education setting.
Elevator:
The elevator replaces the chapter tests that encourage the habit of cram and forget with the pattern of learn and remember. This small adaptation allows students to advance and be challenged as their needs require.

Powerful books like How to Create Math Experts with Fluency Quizzes, The Essential Navigation Tool for Creating Math Experts and Divine Biblical Connections come equipped with key concept lists already prepared, in many cases for kindergarten through grade 8, empowering educators to efficiently gauge their students' knowledge and easily challenge those who are ready for the next level.  
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Inventions for Resilience

Reinforced Concrete:
Reinforced concrete is both dependable and creative. Education needs both.

Resources like Wordless Books for Young Authors, Custom Spelling Dictionary, How to Create Language Experts with Literary Terms, My Personal Math Book, and My Important Word Book foster both knowledge dependability and creativity. Young children's resilience with learning how to read is strengthened mightily by the books in our Bible Patterns for Early Readers and Aesop Patterns for Early Readers series.
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The Crane:
Skyscrapers are built with hands-on effort and resilience is also often achieved by attentive hands-on focus. Deep understanding and appreciation are both benefitted by hands-on experiences and learning.

Teaching guides such as How to Create Math Experts with Pattern Blocks, How to Create Math Experts with Base Ten Blocks, and How to Create Math Experts with Fraction SlicesTM take on paper concepts and transition them to tangible objects children can physically manipulate and visually explore to bolster their understanding of complex mathematical concepts. The newest addition to our product line, Creating Future Math Experts with Race GamesTM (launching Friday, June 6, 2025), challenges students by putting their knowledge to the test in a fun and engaging way! Useful tools like the Place Value Placemat, Fraction SlicesTM and Mathematical Manipulative Stencils transfers what a child is seeing in their mind to a memorable visual representation.

Inventions for Wonder

Centralized Heating and Air Conditioning:
Formal open-ended dialogue with students is huge in creating a positive learning environment. The key element of this process is when adults do the listening, children often share exactly what they need. Togetherness creates such a great learning climate.

The "Will and Thrill" matrix allows children to give teachers a self-assessment for will (resilience) and thrill (wonder). Getting in the practice of hypothesis with students, "This might work, who knows? We can try this for two weeks and see the results." Hearing that phrase in response to reasonable requests from students let them know they are being listened to and their ideas and feelings are valid.

Some may ask, how these hypotheses can be proven. Classroom Run Charts and Family Run Charts are powerful visual representations available to download here on our site. The purpose of these graphs is to add up the total quiz scores and track them overtime displaying the ongoing results and knowledge advancement.
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Powerful Water Pump Systems:
Similar to the way water is pumped to the top of skyscrapers and flows back down with gravity, schools help wonder to be "pumped" into the brain and spirit of children and what flows with ease if the wonder is properly nourished? Resilience. The two together create mastery.

Children's success with knowledge intake (steel framework and elevator) is combined with understanding (reinforced concrete and the crane), the last step is for students to apply their knowledge and understanding of concepts. The best guide for evaluating their application of knowledge and understanding is the dichotomous rubric. Just like that the wonder created from gaining knowledge and understanding is "pumped" up and now it comes back as accelorated performance! 
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Foundation:
Foundations are ancient; by no means a new invention. But without them, all would crumble.

Biblical truths are the foundation for successful lives. Our resources Bible Patterns for Early Readers and Divine Biblical Connections: 105 Classical Bible Stories Woven Together support the development and maintenance of these sturdy lasting foundations.
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