Part 6 in our How to Write Homeschool Unit Studies series by Tina Franks

So You’ve finished writing out this unit study.  Now what do You do with it? 

How do You use it?

How you go about teaching your unit study depends on a great number of factors.  Before we discuss those, remember again that that beauty of learning with unit studies is the freedom they provide to really learn about a topic. 

While it’s great to set some goals for completing the study, don’t feel like you have to force yourself to run through it in a week.  Take the time you and your student need to learn and enjoy the learning process. 

But how long should it take? 

The answer to this question depends on how wide of a topic you’ve chosen to study. 

A study on a children’s picture book might take a week, while a study on Ancient China might take a month or more.  The broader the topic you’ve chosen and the more you’ve included, the longer it’ll take to go through. 

Let common sense and realism be your guide when planning and, above all, allow yourself the flexibility to take an extra few days or even weeks if you’re really enjoying what you’re doing. 

Foster that love of learning in your students and they’ll learn so much more!

But how do I teach it? 

Just because I’ve suggested flexibility in the duration of your unit study doesn’t mean that it might not be prudent to come up with a loose plan on what to cover and when.  Many people choose to break up the subjects in a unit study, dedicating one day a week to one or two specific subject areas. 

For a smaller unit study, like the children’s picture book mentioned above, you might choose to cover the language arts aspects of the study on Monday, the social studies aspects on Tuesday, science on Wednesday, math and art on Thursday, and field trips or miscellaneous projects on Friday. 

For a larger unit study, like Ancient China, you might choose to allocate one day to a certain sub-topic within a subject or several sub-topics from a couple subject areas per day. 

You know your teaching style better than anyone else.  You know your student better than anyone else.  And by know, you’ve probably got a pretty good grasp of the topic at hand.  Use this knowledge as your guide and schedule your day, your week, your month accordingly.

But I’m teaching several children on several different ability levels.  How can I make this work? 

Again, unit studies are flexible.  You’ve done all of the research already.  The information that an older child will study can be adapted so that a younger child can participate. 

Your older student, if he or she is reading well independently, can read that literature go-along to the younger children.  While the older child is writing a report on it, the younger child can draw a picture.  Everyone can participate in experiments and art projects. 

We include the younger kids in what we do around the house every day, so finding ways to include them in our unit studies is really no different.  Once again, common sense and your knowledge of your particular situation should guide you here.

Coming Next in this Series: Homeschool Unit Studies:Creating Your Own v.s. Buying Premade

P.S. Want to learn more about writing your own unit studies? Sign up below to Follow along (for free) as Tina shows exactly how she creates her latest homeschool unit study

All Those Library Books

You may have noticed back in part four that I included a warning about the number of library books to include in the research process.  I feel it’s important to spend a few minutes talking about this… to save you some undue stress. 

I call it the “TMI-trap.”  We’ve all done it. 

You go to the library, you’ve got three kids in tow, and you need to get some books on a certain topic that they’re supposed to be studying.  So you grab a backpack and fill it to bursting with everything on the subject that you can find at the library, intending to look through the collection when you get home and decide which ones to use, because you know you don’t have a chance of sitting down at the library and deciding. 

While the free time at home does pop up every once in a while for the typical busy homeschool mom to be able to do that, more times than not you’re just stuck with a backpack full of mostly untouched library books that you’ll have to lug back to the library in a few weeks. 

Please don’t stress yourself out like that. 

More information is great, sure, but taking a few minutes at home to research what’s available will save you a great deal of frustration and prevent you from getting overwhelmed and throwing in the unit study writing towel. 

Many library systems have an online catalog that will search by topic and then let you further narrow that search by branch (if you’re in a system of libraries) or language or type of book.  Check out what’s available if you can.  If the descriptions from your library are vague or you don’t have an online catalog to use, do your research on Amazon.com. 

Get an idea of which books you’d really like to use and take that list to the library. 

Choosing a handful of quality resources over a dozen random books on the topic will both save you time and sanity in the writing process and make the study much more fun for your student.  (You might follow this same advice when it comes to web links and worksheets, as well.  More is not always better!)

Coming Next in this Series: Homeschool Unit Studies: How to Teach with Your Unit Study

P.S. Want to learn more about writing your own unit studies? Follow along as Tina shows exactly how she creates her latest homeschool unit study – a study based on her son’s passion for the Godzilla movies. Just sign up below to follow along for free:

So how do you put it all together?

The thought of writing a unit study was terribly overwhelming when I first began.  After all, how can you possibly take one small topic and create an entire course of study around it? 

That task can easily seem daunting and strike fear into the hearts of even the most seasoned of homeschoolers.  But, it doesn’t have to. 

Take it one step at a time and you’ll breeze right through the process.  In the first three sections of this tutorial alone, you’ve already made quite a bit of progress!

Now is the time to grab a piece of paper and create a good, old-fashioned idea web.  Here’s a good link, if you need a refresher. 

So take one of those topics you came up with earlier and just brainstorm. 

Or, if you’re more of a research-minded bookworm, go to the library and pick out a few books on the topic first and use them to help you brainstorm.  (Don’t go crazy and get 20 books on the subject… just a few will suffice.  We’ll discuss that more later.) 

Once you’ve gotten your idea web down on paper, you can lay it out into a more useable outline.  From the ideas that you listed, categorize them under the major curricular areas where they belong. 

This outline will help you to discover any areas you might have wanted to cover but haven’t included or areas in which you’ve just got too much going on. 

It will also help you to uncover rabbit trails… those little learning detours that flow naturally from the study of your chosen topic.  Take some time to make sure you are happy with your outline.

From here, it shouldn’t be difficult at all to flesh out your unit study, if you choose to do that. 

Depending on the ability level of your student or students, you might choose to do either a unit study starter or a complete unit study. 

What’s the difference? 

For an older, more independent, student you might simply do a study starter.  This is where you would simply turn your outline into a list of expectations for your student and let him do all of the research. 

Likely, you’d want to do the research beforehand for a younger student or for multiple age groups.  So follow your own outline and fill in the blanks. 

• Get those books from the library, if you haven’t done so already, and answer your own questions. 
• Write out any hands-on activities or projects that you have in mind. 
• Print out any worksheets that you want to include. 
• Compile a list of any web links you want to follow or any extra reading you want your child to do (again with those library books!) and include that as part of your unit study. 

When finished, a complete unit study should ideally contain all of the information you’ll need to learn about the topic you’ve chosen.

Shannon’s Note:

If you prefer to create that Idea Web on your computer instead, I really like FreeMind mind mapping software, it’s free and fairly easy to use. I have it on both my netbook and my main computer and use it for unit studies, planning out the year, to do lists, when I’m stuck on a writing project ….you get the idea.

Coming Next Week: Homeschool Unit Studies: All Those Library Books

Until then, enjoy!

…Shannon

P.S. If you need help with FreeMind or want some great tips for using mindmaps, I highly suggest checking out Bob the Teacher’s step by step video training – Discover Freemind.  You can also get the Freemind software free there too.

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.

**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!

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!