Part 3 in our How to Write Homeschool Unit Studies series by Tina Franks

 

So far Tina’s shared what a unit study is, and how to choose a topic, so now let’s get into the next two big questions…

 

What subjects do I have to include?

This first question has many answers and all of them are correct.  For a complete unit study, it is a good idea to try to include activities from all of the subjects you would normally teach.  But, you don’t have to. 

Read that again. 

You don’t have to include every subject. 

You should include what you feel is important to the study of your selected topic and follow those trails that spring naturally from its study. 

Including applied math in a unit study on safety is quite possible, but don’t feel that you have to force it into the unit if it just doesn’t flow in the direction you want it to. 

Remember, part of the beauty of creating and using a unit study is the freedom of being able to study, on your own terms, a topic or theme that you and your student have a real interest in. 

It is the freedom of being able to follow those little detours that naturally spring from a child’s curiosity. This is not textbook teaching and it should not be made to conform to that style of learning.

For those who like it laid out, though, here is a partial list of some of the subjects that can be incorporated into a unit study.

• Reading comprehension / literature connections
• Writing activities
• Handwriting practice via copywork
• Grammar concepts
• Vocabulary
• Applied math (such as measuring); word problems; graphing
• Science experiments or exploration into related science topics
• Bible study or memorization
• Character traits
• Social studies concepts – mapping, history, cultural connections, community connections
• Research skills
• Field trips and webquests
• Art projects, art history, picture study, artist study
• Music study
• Life skills connections – cooking, service projects, etc.

Again, this is just a partial list of the myriad of subjects that can be incorporated into your unit study. 

So what about holes in your child’s learning? 

Simply answered, there are holes in every education.  Not every chapter is covered in every textbook.  Kids get sick and miss a few lessons and will never recover every single bit of information from those days that they missed. 

As children, we were most likely not taught every single piece of information that should have been taught. 

Every education has gaps and we will never be able to teach our students everything.  Thinking that we can teach them everything is, while admirable, quite unrealistic. 

The goal of a unit study is not so much to cover every bit of information that’s out there, but to foster in our students the love of learning and the motivation to learn more on their own.  With those tools, they’ll be presented with a tremendous opportunity to learn as much as they want. 

So now that we’ve got some topics picked out and we know what areas we can cover within those topics, let’s talk about how to put it all together.

Up Next: Homeschool Unit Studies: How to Put it All Together

**UPDATE**
Tina is about to start a new, huge monster of a unit study, and she volunteered to let you and I follow along as she creates it. This is the perfect opportunity to learn exactly how she goes about putting together a study. J

Interested? Just enter your email address below and we’ll send you Tina’s updates whenever they are ready!

Part 2 in our How to Write Homeschool Unit Studies series by Tina Franks

Now that you know what homeschool unit studies are, let’s talk about Choosing a Topic for your unit study….

There are endless options when it comes to choosing a topic for a unit study.  Think about what your student is passionate about. Think about what you’re planning to learn this year and what could be made more interesting by allowing your child to study it in a variety of ways. 

If it can be taught, it can most likely be turned into a unit study, large or small. 

A Literature Unit Study

One type of unit study, and a topic of discussion in its own right, is the literature unit. Perhaps you’ve chosen several read-alouds for the year. A unit can be written around one of these selections.

Literature very easily lends itself to this type of study because it naturally stimulates all of our senses and our entire knowledge-base.

• Grammar concepts can be introduced and reinforced through the reading of a good book, as can new vocabulary words.  e.g, What is the setting of the story?
• Reading comprehension and writing activities are a given in a literature study.
• History, geography and science can easily be extracted and rabbit trails followed. 

e.g., What’s the climate like there? 
Can you find it on the map? 
What was life like there during a specific period in history?

 Biblical and character-building principles, too, can be gleaned from a literature selection.  Talk about the characters and their actions.  What can we learn from them?  What Bible verses apply? 

A picture study of the illustrations in the book is also an easy path to expand upon.

Shannon’s note: For a quick example of a literature unit study, check out my free Robinson Crusoe unit study

A Topical Unit Study

Then, of course, you have the topical unit study, where you study a variety subjects based on one topic.  Here are just a handful of examples of topical unit studies:

• Science – migration, gravity, birds of prey
• Social Studies – ancient China, your home state, the Mayan culture, St. Patrick’s Day
• Life Skills – cooking, safety, responsibility
• Bible – Noah, creation, life during Jesus’ time

This list could go on indefinitely, but you get the idea. Anything you or your students are interested in studying is fair game for a unit study. Rabbit trails are followed and curricular areas are expanded upon in the same manner you would in a literature study.

What Do You Want to Study?

So sit down and write out a few topics that you’d like to study.  Once you’ve chosen a topic, you can decide on some of the subjects that be incorporated into its study.

Shannon’s Note: Seriously this is that simple – just pick a book or a topic that you want to study, and then build your unit study from there.  Right now I’m working on an Africa unit study with the kids – which I’m writing as a I go along.

Most topics can be turned into a cross-curricular unit study without too much effort, the biggest challenge is knowing what to include and how deep to go. But Tina will get into that next…

Coming Next Week: Homeschool Unit Studies: What subjects do I have to include?  What about holes?

**UPDATE**

Tina is about to start a new, huge monster of a unit study, and she volunteered to let you and I follow along as she creates it. This is the perfect opportunity to learn exactly how she goes about putting together a study. J

Interested? Just enter your email address below and we’ll send you Tina’s updates whenever they are ready!

Okay, I promised one more free heart-healthy cookbook, so here it is.  The very last one in this heart healthy series.

This is an older version of the print version of the Keep the Beat Cookbook I shared with you earlier. 

Also called Keep the Beat Heart Healthy Recipes from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, this version has 156 pages of heart healthy recipes and advice on how to cook heart healthy. 

The recipes have more of a  down home American feel to them, and cover quite a few categories, including:

• Appetizers
• Soups (yum – minestrone soup is included!)
• Main dish meats including beef, chicken, and fish, - and lamb, pork, and veal which you don’t often see.
• Vegetarian main dish meals
• Pasta recipes
• Vegetable, Potato, and Rice Side dishes
• A few quick breads, including the biscuit recipe that was in the Heart Healthy Southern Recipes Cookbook
•  plus some toppings and salad dressings

It all looks yummy – and healthy

Download your free pdf version of this cookbook from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. (sorry can’t find the print version for this one)

Enjoy!

…Shannon

Don’t forget to Grab Your Copies of the other Heart-Healthy Cookbooks I shared in this series:

• Are You Taking Care of Your Heart?

• A Free Heart Healthy Cookbook for You

• Another Free Heart-Healthy Cookbook For You (Latino recipes)

• Free Cookbook: Heart Healthy Southern Recipes

And while not heart-healthy, here’s another free cookbook with great healthy family recipes in it:

• A Free Cookbook for Moms Feeding a Large Family

Homechool unit studies have been a fun way for us to engage as a family and study together.  I don’t always use them, but when I do, the kids are thrilled, and so is my budget. 

Unit studies can be a very low-cost homeschool curriculum option, especially if you use free unit studies or create your own.  All you need is a plan, some great books, and a little bit of time.

While I do put together my own studies, if I can’t find one I need online and I’m short on time or motivation, I ask my friend, Tina Franks, to put one together for me.  Tina is awesome at unit studies – especially ones around literature or when you want lapbooking pages too.

When she offers a lapbooking or unit study class at her home, I send my kids – cuz they *love* Ms. Tina and her three kids, so much so they love to volunteer to go “help out” Ms. Tina.

In fact, here’s a picture of Tina and Kate  taken here in March 2011 when K was helping Tina out  for a few hours.

So when I got this idea to do this homeschool unit study series, that we are about to embark on, I asked Tina to help me out with it.

So, on Mondays for the next 7 weeks, Tina will be guest blogging here, with a primer on how to write your own homeschool unit studies from scratch.  Starting with:

What are Unit Studies?

by Tina Franks

Before we can talk about writing our own unit studies, we should make sure we all know what they are.  So what is a unit study, anyway? 

Simply put, a unit study is the cross-curricular study of a specific theme or topic.  A topic, such as snow, is thoroughly explored and expanded upon from all angles, incorporating many subject areas (art, music, applied math, language arts, literature, science, social studies, character, writing, etc.).

Unit studies can be adapted for any age range or combination of age ranges.  They can be short-lived or lengthy.  They can be highly structured or left up to the student to expand upon. 

There is a great deal of freedom in learning through unit studies.  Let’s start at the beginning…

Shannon’s Note: One of my favorite things about homeschool unit studies is that there is flexibility, flexibility to educate across multiple ages, like we are doing with our geology unit study, and the flexibility to delve as deep or as shallow as you need or want, or have time for. The kids will often dive much deeper on their own time and accord if something catches their interest.

Up Next: Homeschool Unit Studies: Choosing a Topic & Expanding On It

**UPDATE**
Tina is about to start a new, huge monster of a unit study, and she volunteered to let you and I follow along as she creates it. This is the perfect opportunity to learn exactly how she goes about putting together a study.

Interested? Just enter your email address below and we’ll send you Tina’s updates whenever they are ready!

So, in the last episode of my work-at-home mom story, I shared a little about Greg and I’s experience with multi-level marketing and direct selling. And how even though we chose not to continue that business, we learned a lot – about business, about people, and about ourselves.

So, today, here’s my top 3 business lessons learned from our Multi-Level Marketing & Direct Selling stint.

#1 – The Dream, The Plan, and then the Reality

You dream of starting a business, of earning extra income, of getting out debt, of staying home with your kids and still earning money, of working on your own schedule, in your own way.  And that is good.

To dream is  necessary. The Dream, the why, will sustain you through the ups and downs of your business. In fact, without the dream, without the why, it’s hard to stay with and in your business.

But to make it happen, you need a plan – and more importantly, and actionable plan. 

Dreaming and planning is FUN….

But for any real results to happen you have to get out and work your plan!

I know, crazy.

But the reality is to get any business going, to keep any business going, you have to do the work.

It’s easy to get sucked into the dream, and the plan, and the best intentions. But when push comes to shove… even part-time and at-home businesses need to be taken as seriously as a JOB. And while BOSS isn’t going to fire you if you don’t show up and do the work, the results are the same – no income.

The dream will keep you going, the plan will keep you on track, and the reality – doing the work – will keep you moving forward and produce the Results.

#2 – Relationships Matter – But Not in the Way You Think

The phrase “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” always makes me cringe – mostly because it feels a little elitest to me. But the reality is that relationships do matter in business.

Now, in multi-level marketing and some direct selling, newbies often think that they will get their friends and family on board, and life will be all cherries and roses. But it’s just doesn’t work that way.  Close friends and family often take a “wait and see” approach, to see if you are going to make the opportunity work. 

But relationships do matter – the relationships you build with customers, with prospects, with others in complementary businesses and industries, even competitiors.

You never know where a referral will come from. And quite frankly you want those referrals. And you never know what you’ll learn.

Don’t worry about selling someone who isn’t interested. Help them out, build a relationship with them, send business their way if the opportunity comes up. Over time, that relationship may grow into more business, either directly or through referrals.

And,  if nothing else you’ll know another interesting person who enriches your world and adds to your perspective – or even your story

#3- Business is Often Just a Numbers Game

People will refer their friends to you if they know, like, and trust you – and they’ll even buy from you if that relationship is there and they have a need or desire for what you are selling.

But, the bottom line is that not everyone has a need or desire at the same time. To have consistency, it’s often simply a numbers game.

And knowing your industry’s average numbers allows you to step away from that emotional feeling when things are not happening as fast as you’d like, and check to see where you are at numbers wise - with leads, with calls, with follow-ups, with your traffic, whatever it is in your business.

Are you reaching the numbers necessary so that word can spread about you and your product or service?

For whatever reason, making that realization that it wasn’t “me”, it was that I wasn’t doing the work to reach the “number” of people I needed, was freeing.

Knowing that if I do the work, work the plan, build authentic relationships with people, give great customer service, and simply put in the numbers, it will eventually all come together - I like that.

And it’s a concept that I’ve found true in every business opportunity I’ve pursued. Bottomline, if you reach enough people, you’ll find those that are in need of what you are offering or they’ll be referred to you (which is the best thing ever!)

So that’s that. My top 3 business lessons learned from our multilevel marketing experience. There are more, but that’s a book, not a post

Next up in this series… My first real ”Work-at-Home Mom” experience once K was born.

Until then… remember, I believe in you!

…Shannon

Other Related Posts You May Enjoy:

• Perseverance: Choosing to Not Give Up

• Insights on How to Make Money Working From Home While Homeschooling Your Kids (podcast)

• My Work-at-Home Mom Story- Part 1: Before Kids

• My Work-at-Home Mom Story – Part 2: MultiLevel Marketing & Direct Selling