Did you take the homeschool style quiz and find out you are a unit study homeschooling style? Unit studies are FUN you guys! They are basically a themed approach to learning. So you would base your actual school work around one common theme and fit in all your subjects–with all your children–into that one theme. Sound too good to be true? On the downside, unit studies mean a lot more involvement from you. However, they are often full of crafting, lapbooking, and discovery that make the other subjects seem not quite so daunting. If you’re feeling a little lost, take a look at an example here:
If we were say doing a unit study on sharks we would spend a week or two weeks or a month, learning about sharks. We would read about sharks, we would maybe visit an aquarium, we would go to the ocean if we could. We would be shark math and figure out how fast they could swim and how far in what amount of time. We would measure out how many teeth they had and skip count them (math). We would learn about their anatomy, what they eat and how they sleep (science). We would write a report about them and look up vocabulary references (language arts). We would learn different spelling words that applied and watch some shark week videos on iTunes. Are you starting to see how it works?
One of my favorite ways to compile the information is through notebooking or lapbooking. These are both common approaches with people who do unit studies, as they don’t have workbooks per-say and it is a convenient way to keep everything they have learned together. There are many different unit studies that are pre-made out there for you to purchase (did you get your Beaver unit study just for subscribing to my blog?), there are many unit studies you can make on your own (all you need is a library and paper and you’re set). You can find a lot of different curriculums that are put together for notebooking or lapbooking where you just have to print off your resources and assemble it. Which is great! Companies know how much work it is to put together and they are trying to make it as easy as possible for you to use this approach if you find it works for your family and vision.
But the absolute BEST thing about this approach is that you can use it for the whole family. So you can all read together or watch a movie to get your information, and then you can all work on projects at your individual levels. This means that for large families, it really is the only approach that allows you to facilitate multiple subjects as a unit (hm, I’m sensing a play on words here 😉 ). In case you can’t tell, I love unit studies. I don’t use them exclusively, but we definitely use them. We use them for our social studies with an amazing curriculum that has it all put together for me! And we often do a science lapbook or unit study if my children feel led (see how eclectic I am?). Help get the word out about this homeschool style by pinning the image below and keep reading!
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Are you as excited about unit studies as I am? What appeals to you most about this homeschool style? Comment below!
Make sure you go back and take the homeschool style quiz if you haven’t already, and take the time to read about each of the homeschool styles. The more we can become aware of the focus of each style, the more we will find what resonates the most with us, and sometimes that is fluid and changing!
