Posted by Cindy on January 22, 2010
A few more questions have come up regarding how I organize and plan our unit studies. You can find the first post at Unit Studies Revisited and the follow-up post at Unit Study Questions Answered. As long as you keep asking questions, I’ll keep answering. 
“To clarify, it sounds like you do one unit at a time, either a science-based one or a history-based one. Is that right?” Yes. I have tried doing two at the same time – history a couple days a week, science a couple days a week and it never worked out well for us.
“I really want to do unit studies, but feel pulled toward a full curriculum so I’ll be sure not to leave anything out.” So many people – and I mean almost every one I talk to – feel like a prepared curriculum (ie. A Beka, Sonlight) gives them “everything” they need. In other words, once their child is finished with 12 years of a particular curriculum, they will have learned all there is to know. Certainly, your child WILL have a very solid education, but there is always more to know, no matter what curriculum your child uses.
Others really WANT to do all that certain curriculum choices offer, but find the assignments overwhelming and impossible to fit into a normal routine. I have never wanted my children to literally be “doing school” for six or more hours a day just to say we got it all in.
Unit studies are a wonderful way to get learning in without being overwhelmed. When we can learn about a science or history topic, complete research on that topic, include wonderful literature (reading skills), writing assignments, drama, speaking, etc. – in other words, pull in all sorts of academic areas in one sha-bang (yes, that’s my own made up word) – then we’re getting SO much of what the boxed curriculum choices have to offer, but in a more compact, doable way. In a way that is drastically more interesting and fun as compared to most boxed curriculum choices.
Will I leave things out over my children’s education? Certainly! (As will all curriculum choices.) There’s way too much knowledge to be gained in this fast-paced world of ours. I’m doing my best to give them solid instruction in the basics – readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmetic – AND preparing them with the skills they need to be able to find information they need to know. At the same time, hopefully giving them a lifetime love for learning that will spur them to keep on gaining knowledge their whole lives.
“How do you decided what you are going to do each day? How do you break that down?” That’s a tough question to answer. Let me say again that on most days we complete Bible, math and language arts lessons separate from the unit study, so they come first. Afterwards, we jump into the unit study time.
So, on a typical day you might see us sitting together to read from the Bible, trudging through our Saxon lessons, going over multiplication flashcards, completing a grammar lesson, practicing spelling words, writing or typing something, and reading from a good book. After the “main stuff” is out of the way, you’d find us doing one thing or another having to do with our unit study. This could include one or more of the following: reading a book, researching on the internet, completing a lapbook activity, working on a project, performing an experiment or putting on a play.
How do I choose what we’re actually going to do each day? Hmmm…that’s hard to explain. If you remember the main unit plan I make, you’ll remember that I jot down activity ideas. Well, over the weekend I try to sketch out a basic plan for the upcoming week. It’s nothing fancy, just quick notes about which math lesson we’ll aim to complete each day, which grammar lesson, what writing projects… and what unit projects. I simply look at my unit plans and jot down things I think we can tackle for each day. Those plans don’t always work! Some days we get so involved in a project (or the opposite) that my good intentions don’t happen. That’s okay with me, though, I just readjust as the week rolls on.
Also remember that I said in the first post that I rarely ever complete everything on the unit plan list. As we actually dive into a unit, I often realize that there are way too many ideas, or some of the ideas won’t fit like I had imagined, or I just don’t like them anymore.
No unit study day is ever the same. (See, I told you this was hard to explain.) If one day finds us reading a book and completing a lapbook activity, the next day might find us choosing final projects and diving into them, while the next day might find us cooking a themed meal for dad. One thing I can tell you clearly, (and I hope it helps in some way bring a real answer to the question) in planning, I TRY to plan for about an hour’s worth of unit “work”. My kids give up on me after an hour. 
If I’ve made this muddier than it is clear, please keep asking more specific questions so I can try to pinpoint a better answer.
“When you choose your artists/composers for the year, how do you choose? Do you tie those studies into the four year history/science cycles? Nature? Seasons? Holidays? I’m getting really bogged down with how much there is to do! So many options, so little time!”
You’re exactly right – so many wonderful learning opportunities with so little time to fit it all in!
I don’t have a four-year plan for artists or composers. As I’m planning my year, I’ll pull out the NaturExplorers units that I hope to use monthly for nature study and see if there are artists or composers included that we haven’t studied yet. I try to tie nature, artists and composers in together. That doesn’t always work and that’s okay with me.
On months where I need to fill in, quite honestly, I just pull out my Discovering Great Artists book and my Great Composers Dover coloring book
and choose someone we haven’t yet studied! There is no rhyme or reason to my choices. This is one area where I don’t worry about choosing particular artists or composers to go with our time period or unit. You could, though. It’s just something that hasn’t seemed overly important to me. (Nor have I had the time to research who fits with which time period.)
As for nature study, I usually pick a monthly theme from the NaturExplorers units. I try to choose a topic that will go well with the season. Sometimes we ditch the topic of the month and just walk, or something else grabs our attention and we go with it.
I wasn’t really good at including artist/composer study until last year when I decided to set aside an entire day for these things. One day a week, we only do math and a tad bit of language arts, then spend the rest of the day learning about our artist, completing art projects, learning about/listening to our composer, going on a nature walk and maybe completing some sort of experiment that goes along with our nature topic.
Whew! Another long post. Are you still with me?
How are your unit studies going?
Posted by Cindy on January 19, 2010
We’re having so much fun studying snow, ice and frost this season! On a recent nature walk, we were looking specifically for animal tracks. We weren’t disappointed! Each of the pictures below shows prints or trails made by different animals. Unfortunately, I’m not an expert tracker yet, so I can’t identify all of them. I’ve given my educated guesses, though.
These were very small, almost cat-like, but only in one area right below a tree in the woods - I'm guessing a squirrel or chipmunk.
This was obviously a small animal that could easily walk under the wire fence. I hope you can see the trail leading through the field under the fence. My best guess is this is a rabbit trail.
This was a trail of very tiny and shallow prints. Shallow enough to be a bird, but not shaped like birds' feet. Plus, there's a definite drag mark. Can you see it? I'm pretty stumped on this one, but guessing a mouse possibly.
Can you see the prints all the way across the fallen tree? Maybe a raccoon, although the placement of the feet makes me think rabbit. Hmmm...
I loved these delicate little prints side by side. Besides a very small rabbit, I believe a rat or small squirrel could've made the prints.
Deer! I know this one!
I have no idea what made these, but it was neat to think an animal had walked our trail before us. It looks similar like a dog's gait, but our dog had not walked this direction yet. Coyote or fox maybe?
Dog! Our dogs love to walk on the frozen pond.
What great nature finds have you made this month?
Posted by Cindy on January 16, 2010
We finished learning about sound this week. As with the color and light part of the unit, lots of hands-on experiments and demonstrations made for fun learning. Below are some of our activities, although I didn’t get as many pictures this week for some reason.
We experimented with pitch based on the amount of air available for vibration in the jars. The more air to vibrate, the slower the sound waves move. Slower sound waves = a lower pitch.
Several activities helped us to see, hear and feel sound wave vibrations. This is the classic cup and string phone.
Sound waves can bounce off of objects or be absorbed into objects. The kids had to design various experiments to prove both facts.
Click on the graphic above to download a copy of the light, color and sound test I gave the kids.
And, finally, here’s the resource list that’s been in the sidebar. For those of you following my unit study posts, the spines for the unit turned out to be two books I checked out from the library that included wonderfully illustrated experiments with explanations that covered just about every topic I had hoped to cover. The list below includes the extras that helped me fill in when needed.
The spines were: Science For Fun: Light & Color
and Hearing Sounds with Easy to Make Scientific Projects
.
Light, Color and Sound
A-Z Home’s Cool Homeschooling Lessons
Heart of Wisdom Links
Links for Sound
Easy Fun School Music Study
Posted by Cindy on January 12, 2010
Last week we completed lots of activities to learn about and better understand light and color. The color part of the unit was a super time to integrate art/artist study into the theme. Here’s a glimpse into the unit activities.
A homemade pinhole camera allowed us to see images. Can you see the upside down image of Mahayla on the camera's paper? Since light rays travel in a straight line, they flow into the pinhole of the box so that the rays cross one another and invert the image.
A homemade kaleidoscope allowed us to see the effects of reflection.
We used several curved materials to split white light into the color spectrum.
Using a compass and protractor to create circles for color wheels turned into a great math lesson!
Color wheels were mounted on pencils and spun to see what happens when colors are mixed. We made a black and white wheel, too, that turned gray.
We used primary colors to create secondary colors and painted with our new colors.
We each chose one primary color and created new hues by tinting and shading our color. A color is tinted when white is added to it and shaded when black is added to it. Once we had a nice color palette, we made monochromatic paintings.
A chromatography experiment helped us separate colors from markers.
Our study of Seurat this month fit in perfectly as we discussed how images are made up of pixels. A pointillism project inspired by Seurat helped drive the idea of pixels home.
In a discussion about convex lenses making things look bigger, we completed this very simple demonstration to show that anything curved and transluscent will magnify an image.
A homemade microscope helped us to see a slide more closely.
A real microscope with 10x and 43x magnifiers helped us see the slide much better! (Scour your local curriculum sales. I bought this microscope a couple years ago for TWO dollars!)
This week we’re focusing on sound. A post of those activities will follow soon, along with a copy of the final test I’ll give. Since this unit was almost entirely hands-on/project-based (and because I need to get moving on our last HUGE unit of the year – 1900′s history – I won’t be assigning final projects.)
Posted by Cindy on January 7, 2010
Wow. Through my email, there were a lot of questions about unit studies from my original post. I’m glad because it helps me to know what needs to be clarified or expounded upon. I tried to combine all the questions into major themes which you’ll see below. Please feel free to keep asking questions, and I’ll keep trying to answer!
Clarifying what a unit study means to me -
- What is a unit study? A period of time we spend learning about a certain topic. It could be a small topic like electricity or a large topic like ancient history.
- How long does each unit study last? This greatly depends on the topic. If it’s a small topic, a couple of weeks might be enough. If it’s a large topic, an entire semester might be dedicated to it. I rarely limit our time. After planning, I estimate how long I think it might take, but if it needs to be longer or shorter once we get started that’s no big deal.
- How do I break the yearly topic into specified units? In the original post, I talked about following a four year cycle for science and history. This year’s science has been physical science. Within physical science, I knew I needed to cover the topics of energy, heat, electricity, magnets, light, color, sound and machines. Based on resource books I already had on my shelves, it was easy for me to break those topics into five doable units – Energy (including heat), Electricity, Magnets, Light/Color/Sound, and Simple Machines. I try to break the topics into chunks that make sense to go together.
Clarifying “the spine” book of the unit – The spine is the main resource book or piece of literature I use during a unit. It’s the book that encompasses the most unit topics in a clear (usually hands-on) way. Some examples of previous spines have been:
- Westward Expansion unit – Amanda Bennett’s Pioneer Unit
- Medieval History unit – Hands On History: Middle Ages
- Magnet Unit – Magnets and Electricity
- Chemistry – Christian Kids Explore Chemistry
- Inventors & Inventions – A Journey Through Learning Lapbook
- Our upcoming Early 1900′s unit will use an American Girl book called Samantha’s World as the spine. The book gives wonderful information about years from 1900-1920. I’ll find other books and activities to go along with the major topics of the book like women’s sufferage, the Wright brothers, Henry Ford and more. (See the 1st sidebar all the way at the bottom.)
As you can see, I’ve used a variety of spines from prepared units to lapbooking units to texts to library books. What’s most important to me is the overall coverage of topics. Are most of the topics I’m hoping to cover included in this book in a clear (and hopefully fun) way? In some cases, the spine will have most everything I need – explanations for my children and activities that help them understand the topics better. Most of the time though, a spine will either be the explanations without the activities OR the activities without the explanations. This is where I try to find other things to fill in. (Also, most spine books won’t include a test or end of the unit project ideas. I usually come up with both of these things myself.)
The following questions were specific to “the spine”.
- How do I decide which book to use? I hope I’ve answered this pretty well already. It has to be pretty complete in either explanations and/or activity ideas.
- Where do you find your spines? I LOVE the library. My library has lots of activity guides to go along with history and science themes. Otherwise, prepared lapbook units are a great start, or prepared themes from parent/teacher stores. Golly, there are so many wonderful prepared unit studies out there, all you really need to do is type your topic in a search engine and see what comes up. (“______ unit study”) Don’t forget that wonderful resource for nature/science related unit studies called Shining Dawn Books!
- How much of that book do I typically use and how much do I typically pull in from other sources? It just depends. I’m sorry I can’t be more precise, but it’s truly impossible. With a really good lapbook unit, for example, I may not need to add anything besides a test and final project ideas. With a book that leaves holes, I’ll have to find info and activities to fill the holes. With a book that gives great explanations, but no activities, I’ll have to find or dream up the activities.
- Why don’t I just use the spine book and be done with it? Sometimes I do! With our chemisty unit last year, we only used the spine during the unit. At the end of the unit, I asked them to “show what they know” in the form of a chemistry show. Other than giving them a list of topics to cover in their show and some resource books full of ideas for kids about chemistry, all we used was Christian Kids Explore Chemistry. For me, I just don’t find too many prepared units that “do it the way I wanna do it.” By all means, if you look at a unit and think it covers all you need, DON’T fool with adding to it!
- How do I know what to leave out of the spine and what to add to it? In the beginning of my planning stages, I’ll take just a few minutes to find out what topics should be covered during a unit. For example, when planning a unit on physical science, I’ll go to the internet search engine and type in something like “physical science topics”. After browsing a couple of websites, I’ll have a pretty good idea of what I need to cover for physical science. We’re getting ready to jump into a 1900-present unit study. So, I took a few minutes before planning to see what major topics I needed to include in the unit. A simple search for “important events of 1900′s” led me to several lists and timelines that helped me know what to include in the unit. If I find a spine that includes everything except Civil Right, for instance, I’ll need to be sure to include that in the unit. If the spine covers way too much on Civil Rights, I’ll have to cut some of it back a bit.
Combining American and World History is tough, how do I do it? I’ll be honest, this is a tough one for me. In our first four year history cycle, we used Story of the World as our main history teaching. It did a super job of combining American and World History! This second four year cycle, once we came to the time of American exploration, I decided to focus mostly on American history. We pull in world history as it relates to America (ie. WWI.) I’m still pondering how to do it, but world history will be a bigger focus during the third four year cycle.
Within the four year history/science cycle, how do I know what subjects to teach? I tried to clarify this above when I talked about the quick internet searches I do before planning a unit.
How do I know each child is getting what they need for their grade level? Please don’t take this wrong, but, um, I don’t really care. Let’s see if I can say it in a different way. Every single school system in every single state will have different expectations for the same grade leveled student in America. I feel like as long as I’m covering the topics within the four year cycles at a level that is appropriate for my children at the particular time we’re learning it, all is well.
Now, as for how I make sure all three kiddos are getting what they need during the unit, it’s pretty easy. First, the 3rd child is still way too young to be included. I teach everyone the same thing. When activities or projects are assigned, I’ll expect more from the older child. She will have to do more projects, write more in her research, and create a more detailed final product. I usually assign each child a book that goes along with the unit, too. The older child will read a more mature book.
How do I go about planning what I’m going to do so I know what supplies to look for? In the original post, I mentioned noting the main topics to be covered and writing ideas down for each of those topics as I go through my resources. At the same time, I have a supply/library list going. If I know I need to check out such and such book, I’ll write it down. If I know an activity will require toothpicks, I’ll write it down. After the list is made, I’ll go through the house checking off what I already have so I don’t buy too much of anything.
How I add language arts into the units? Language arts, as a rule, is separate from our unit study time. However, I never hesitate to replace the normal l. arts activities with a writing project/research project/or something else that goes along with the unit. Same goes for math.
How are end-of-the-unit projects chosen? I’ve gone into quite a bit of detail about this on another post titled Project-Based Learning.
What it the rhyme and reason behind the four year cycle? It wasn’t my idea! LOL But, the rhyme and reason is, in a nutshell, that all of the sciences and history from Creation to present time are covered every four years in a chronological way. Learning them three times over the course of a child’s schooling is supposed to cement the concepts. Of course, the child will be older and able to understand more each time the four year cycle is repeated, so you can dive further into the learning each time.
This four year cycle is a method in Classical education. Veritas Press is a Classical education company, but they choose to repeat the topics only twice in six year cycles. For me, the reason I chose to go with the cycles is quite simple. I didn’t come out of the public school system understanding anything in terms of how one things fits with another. I wanted my children to have a clearer picture in their head of timelines and events. I wanted them to be able to see how chemistry relates to biology. Working in the methodical cycles made sense to me and I’m finding that my children see the bigger picture of the world around them because I’m not teaching WWI today and medieval times tomorrow.
Do we stick to the four year cycle units only, or do we include other units in the year as well? Mostly, we stick to the four year cycles. I add nature study all year (including summer) and occasionally add in other units when we have extra time. One thing I’ve found to be lacking in my four year cycle is current cultures and geography. That’s an *extra* unit I’m planning for the future.
Once you start high school, will the four year cycle plan need to change according to what is required in your state? In KY, I am required to teach certain subjects (especially for college bound children.) There is no regulation about when and how these subjects are taught. As long as Civics, American History and World History are taught, for example, they don’t care in what year they take place. So, no, this plan won’t need to change.
How much time do you spend doing school per day? It depends (mostly on the get-up-and-go of my children!) On average, we are finished with “schoolwork” in three to four hours. However, the rest of the day is spent doing learning activities like reading, handicrafts, cooking, farming, computer games, etc.
“Everytime I start thinking about/doing unit studies, I get scared and fall back on workbooks.” A lot of people I talk to feel the same fears! Don’t kick yourself over it. If this season in your life is meant for workbooks, that’s fine! If you’re really ready to start unit studies, though, I would suggest finding some prepared unit studies and using them “as is” at first. When you feel more confident, add a couple of things here and there – maybe end of unit projects. As your confidence continues to grow, you’ll find this unit study thing isn’t nearly as hard as it seems right now!
“Say you want to teach using narration, lapbooks, notebooking, copywork, etc. How do you decide what to do and when. Do you include things like narration and copywork everyday?” The spine of my unit pretty well determines the style of the unit. If the spine happens to be a lapbook, then most activities will take the route of lapbooking. If a spine is hands-on, most of the activities will be projects and/or experiments. I purposely plan my units so there is variety throughout the year. It would make me (and my children) unhappy and bored if everything we did revolved around the same type of learning style.
Things like narration, copywork, notebooking, other writing projects, etc. are included within units as they “fit”. In other words, I don’t worry about doing copywork every single day. When I come across a great Bible verse, for instance, that goes with the unit theme, I’ll assign it for copywork one day. When we complete an experiment, I’ll often ask the kids to keep notes in the form of a notebooking page. As they read their assigned reading books, I’ll ask them to narrate once or twice. Writing assignments are easy to fit into final project choices.
In my experience, it all comes out in the wash. My children don’t need to complete narration everyday, for example, in order to know how to narrate. Now, if I see their narration skills are lacking, I’ll offer more opportunity – but in the scheme of real life, I simply don’t have time to do everything everyday (or every week for that matter!) Sometimes, I might even miss copywork altogether during a unit (gasp!) When I miss something in one unit, I just try to add it into the next unit more purposely.
Okay, I think that answers all the questions so far. Please forgive any typos – this was a long post!
