Unit Studies – More Q & A

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?

Animal Signs in the Snow

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?

Can You Hear the Sound?

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

Integrating Math and Nature Study

Posted by Cindy on January 14, 2010

I just posted about a great measurement and graphing activity to do on a snowy day over at Shining Dawn Books.  Be sure to check it out!

Melissa has been inspiring me to practice my macro photography skills.  I’m getting better, but still have work to do….

This was a single snowflake that had fallen on my black glove.

This was a delicate layer of frost on the inside of my van window.

Light and Color Fun

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.)