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”.

1. 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.
2. 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! 
3. 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.
4. 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!
5. 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!

Related posts:

1. Questions Answered
2. Inventors/Inventions Unit Study
3. Unit Studies Revisited

The A Journey Through Learning lapbook was an outstanding spine.  I had never used one of their lapbooks before, but it won’t be the last one!  It was put together in a very organized, simple to implement way – refreshing!!

We also completed some of our own inventions using ideas from the Teacher Created Materials Inventions book.  (You can find links to the books I’m mentioning below.)  The kids LOVED creating their own inventions.  I’ve put together a little slideshow of our lapbooks and inventions….

Below is the list of resources that have been in the sidebar.  We read a few more great books from the library, too…Lights Out,So You Want to Be An Inventor?, I Is for Idea: An Inventions Alphabet, The Berenstain Bears Fly-It! Up, Up, and Away!

Inventors and Inventions

Lesson Idea Links from The Homeschool Mom

Lots of Links from About.com

Next stop, Simple Machines!  You can find the resources for that unit in the sidebar very soon.

Related posts:

1. Magnet Unit Study
2. A True Unit Study Day
3. Kentucky Unit Study

I’ve had lots of questions about the projects we complete as part of our homeschool life.  I’ve even presented a workshop specifically concerning this topic, as well as including it as a topic in my most popular workshop “Creative Homeschooling”.

I’ve been wanting to write a blog post about incorporating projects into your homeschool for quite some time, but Jimmie finally gave me the kick in the pants I needed when commenting on my post about our Presidents of the United States study.  So for Jimmie and everyone else who ever wondered, here are the basics about adding projects to homeschooling… )

Why add projects?

• They encourage independent learning.
• They require creative and critical thinking.
• They require writing and research.
• They allow for choices.
• They allow for meaningful, hands-on experiences.
• They allow for varied learning styles to be met.
• They encourage real learning about a subject that isn’t simply memorized for a test and then forgotten.

Our methods of learning are continually changing – mostly because I want my children to experience all forms of learning and not become “stuck” when they’re required to do something later in life in a different way than they’ve learned.  For example, if I only gave paper and pencil tests for every subject throughout their entire homeschool career, they would probably struggle when asked to complete a project at some point that requires creative thinking, the ability to put together a nice visual product and speak about it.  On the other hand, if I never gave paper and pencil tests, this wouldn’t prepare them adequately for possible future tasks either.  I hope this makes sense.  I’m continually changing the approach so they’ll be prepared to handle whatever task is thrown their way!

Even more so, though, I feel like projects have helped my children understand and retain information greatly – as compared to simply learning about a topic and regurgitating the info back to me on a test.  Why?  Because they become part of the learning through their projects!  In order to complete the project, they have to “know their stuff” about the topic AND put it together in an organized, thoughtful, expressive way.  Besides this, we expect our children to present their projects – to further embed the learning and to become comfortable with verbalizing themselves.  Believe me, just because they can put together a super project, doesn’t mean they can automatically speak about it.  This is a separate skill to be learned, but just as important.

What are projects?

Projects can really be anything!

• play/skit/speech/storytelling
• story/report/book report/article/newsletter
• mobile/diorama/model
• experiment/demonstration
• scrapbook/poster/journal
• art/craft/cooking/other handicraft

How do I add projects to our learning?

This is a doozy, so I think I’ll break it down into a couple of areas:

When?  By the time my children are seven, they’re introduced to the world of projects.  I always complete the first projects alongside them.  Once I see they’re capable of completing a thorough project without my help, I’ll be available as a resource for questions or ideas.  By the time they’re in 5th grade (hopefully earlier), they’re expected to complete projects on their own with very little direction from me.

If you’re starting projects when your children are older, I suggest still working along side them at first and giving very clear expectations for final outcomes until they are able to complete a thorough project on their own.

When I say give very clear expectations, this is a little misleading.  I typically give my children expectations that are open-ended.  In other words, “I expect your diorama to show at least five important aspects of Native American life.  I also expect that all surfaces with be covered and several 3-D models will be present.”  This gives them a direction without me telling them exactly what to include and how to include it.  Clear as mud?

Where?  Most of the time, projects are interjected into our unit studies – which happen to be science and history related.  A typical unit plan might be to learn about a topic together over the course of a week or more (depending on the subject.)  At the end of the unit, I decide how many projects that unit warrants.  For instance, if the unit was really long, I’ll expect five or more projects to be completed.  If the unit was really short, one might be enough.  They have a length of time to complete the projects, we set a date for presentations and the presentations become the finale of the unit.

I will usually come up with a list of several project choices from which my children can choose.  I try to vary the learning styles required in the project list so my son who doesn’t prefer too much writing can find projects to suit his needs.  Here’s a sample list of project choices I might offer if I expect them to complete THREE projects:

• file folder report
• diorama
• skit with siblings
• scrapbook page
• newspaper article
• commercial

In this list, all will require some reading, research and writing, but can you see how they allow for a variety of learning styles – writing, speaking, organizing, crafting, acting, etc?

We have also completed language arts projects such as bound poetry books and math projects such as grocery story price comparison charts.  Remember that most any project is going to involve reading, research and writing  – so language arts is always included!

As for grading, well, we don’t give many grades around here.  We do talk about what was really good about the projects and what could be improved next time.  Through my gentle direction, my children have quickly learned how to critique their work.  (If not handled with care and lots of encouragement, this could turn into self-bashing.  Don’t let them do that to themselves!)

If I’ve noticed that one of my children really needs to improve a certain part of their projects, I will simply include that more specifically in my instructions to them next time around.  For example, one of my children was not very thorough in his/her research and writing during our past unit.  When the next project time rolls around, I’ll be sure he/she chooses a project with plenty of writing and make it very clear how much of each I expect. You see, project time allows for choices, but mom’s still the boss!  )

I sure hope this has been helpful and not muddied the water!  Please ask whatever questions you may have and I’ll write a second post if I need to clarify anything.

You might find the following posts helpful in seeing some of the projects we’ve completed in the past.

• Presidents of the United States
• US Geography
• Slavery and Civil War
• Westward Expansion
• American Revolution
• Native Americans
• Kentucky History
• Weather
• Astronomy
• Chemistry
• Poetry at the Coffee House

Just in case you ever wondered, one of the things Melissa and I have included in the NaturExplorers units is project-based learning.  Each unit gives several ideas for hands-on, writing/research and other projects you can assign!

Related posts:

1. KY Project Presentations
2. Learning Centers
3. Embriodery Project

This is some of the poetry she shared.

Nothing like dressing up for you big performance!  (Insert rolling eyes.)  The poster in the back was a display teaching the audience (her family) about poetry forms and the tv is on because it was playing soft music.

Yummy banana bread.  Every coffeehouse poetry reading needs food!

This week and next, the kids are working on presidential projects.  I’ll share them with you soon!

No related posts.

We’ve had a wonderful month of nature study! I don’t know whether the fruits and nuts were abundant enough to make our nature studies such a success or the weather was so picture perfect that anything would’ve been a success. Either way, we had fun!  We’re off to study ponds in October!

Here are the resources from the sidebar…

Related posts:

1. Ending our Month Spent with Wildflowers
2. Setting Aside Time for the Good Stuff
3. Traveling Seeds

Henri Rousseau Artist Study Resources

Olga’s Gallery

Landscape with Cattle

View of Bridge Sevres

The Football Players

Monkeys in a Jungle

Lesson Ideas

Princeton Online – Several Ideas

KinderArt – Fantasy Jungle

Lesson Plan Page – Stained Glass

Books We Read

Don’t forget to sign up for the giveaway that takes place bright and early Thursday, October 1st!

Related posts:

1. Rousseau’s Jungle Paintings
2. Van Gogh Resources
3. Vivaldi Resources

Have you ever noticed that God made seeds with adaptations that give them the best opportunity to make it to fertile land and grow into new plants?  Hooks, wings, feather, rolling shells, floating bodies and yummy fruit whose seed will be pooped out are several examples.  We took time last week during our nature walk to observe seed adaptations using the notebooking page found in the NaturExplorer Fruit and Nut study.

Here’s just a sampling of the seeds we found.  This time of year is wonderful for finding fruits, nuts and seeds!

Okay, not a seed, fruit or nut, but I couldn’t resist this picture!  This friendly little Fritillary spent several minutes fluttering between this Queen Anne’s Lace and a stalk of Yellow Ironweed.

Related posts:

1. Take a Walk in Your Socks??
2. Wildflower Studies
3. Creation Club – Evergreens, Focusing on Conifers

Mahayla on the wildflower scavenger hunt.

Caleb checking off his scavenger hunt list.

Eli scavenging wildflowers to hit with a stick.

After the scavenger hunt, each of the big kids had to go in search of one flower that was new to them to bring back to the blanket.  They had to identify it and write down various characteristics and information on a notebooking page.

Filling out a notebooking page for the flower of their choice.

Caleb's flower = Heal-All

Mahayla's flower = Evening Primrose

As usual, we had such a lovely time basking in God’s creation!  You can find the notebooking pages we used (and more), plus TONS of wildflower activity ideas in the NaturExplorers unit Wonderful Wildflowers.

Related posts:

1. 1st Day of Summer Wildflower Walk
2. June’s Creation Club
3. December Artist and Composer Studies

Classics for Kids

Listen

Book We’ll Read

Related posts:

1. December Artist and Composer Studies
2. Composer Richard Wagner
3. Mozart Resources