I learned this term last night at a tea for home-school moms group. It sounds amazing, but where do I start? How do I do it? Where do I get them? I did ask the kids today what they want to learn. I have a list am excited. Can anyone help me?
Here is the topics of interest: horses caterpillars bats eggs deer trees pop paper cars dinosaurs carpentry math bunnies hot air balloons paper plates napkins Kleenex pop corn barbie dolls
I love unit studies. They can get as intense or simple as you desire. Take horses for example. For history, study how horses came to America. If I remember correctly, the Spanish brought them over. Study why the Spaniards came in the first place. Study how the horses spread wild throughout parts of America. This can be history. For Health you can study the horses physical body. See how it works, compare it with a humans body. For Spelling, make spelling lists that have to do with horses. You get the point! We have done unit studies that focus on only one subject and some that focus on many. It is up to you. You can also find free unit studies on line or make your own.
...and for Geography, you can locate the areas where horse were first used in America. Find Spain and mark it on a map.
Pick something do-able, such as INSECTS or DINOSAURS. Then sit down and brainstorm that topic. What I learned to do is to write the topic in the middle of the paper, and all around it write the different subject areas and then list ideas under the subject areas as they come to you. For example, under LITERATURE, you would add "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and under ART you might add making caterpillars out of egg cartons. Under science, you might want to do sequencing of changing from egg to caterpillar to butterfly. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO REINVENT THE WHEEL!!! In other words, go to the library, get on line, see what ideas OTHER PEOPLE have come up with! It's OK to "borrow" their ideas/activities!
Unit Study links I put all my unit study links together on one of my blog pages so I can find them all myself, Links on explaining what a unit study is, websites completly about unit studies, yahoo groups on unit studies, pay sites and free sites, even online video feeds on how to do a unit study. Feel free to go look at my one blog page on it. There are a few of us that love doing the movie unit studies on here. http://frugalcountrymom.blogspot.com/2008/01/frugal-unit-studies.html Sam
Ahhh dont be I didnt mean to overwhelm you there is just so much you can do when doing a unit study on any Topic. The links just give you ideas. Basic unit study-You take a Topic any topic and add the basic schooling subjects you want your kids to learn You dont have to add all of it just what ever you feel you want to add there is no set rules. To name just a few below: Some Basic Subjects: Math Science Reading Writing Spelling Geography Grammar Movie Unit study A movie unit study is like for instance I watched a movie on black beauty with the kids I say this one because we have already did it and you said one subject you wanted to know was on horses The kids watched the movie then read the book or vice versa to get their reading in They wrote a few paragraphs on what they watched and what they thought of it. This got them to do their writing, spelling grammar. I asked them about the location of the movie so we went to go look at the globe and study the country more thats my geography. Science we did the anatomy of a horse Of course we did a bit more different levels for different age kids I have it on webpage for an example we didn't do all of it. http://www.frugalcountrymom.com/blackbeauty.html Sam
You can buy unit studies already made - try currclick.com or konos. But often the best ones are homemade b/c you can tailor it to your kids interests and needs. Like the other said, start with your topic and just build. write a poem about horses, write an information report about different breeds, go ride a horse for sport, read about them, study the history of them in your country, learn about famous horses (eg for us that would be phar-lap). They can get really big, or just keep it simple. Sometimes we spend weeks on a unit study - space took months. Sometimes maybe only a day or 2 - when we did mangroves we spent a day in a mangrove learning and exploring, and a day reading and putting it all together.
Speaking of google - you can also google "horses" and "unit study" (put "unit study" in quotes) and come up with various units already done. We do a quasi-unit study approach, in that we check out a ton of books at varying levels from the library (I love reserving books online!) for the kids, and leave them out. Some we read together, some I let them work through on their own, and some don't get read (or only part of them does). We integrate from there, but I've found having a lot of info really helps the kids learn more than I alone can teach them, and they easily absorb the things that most interest them.
We started with unit studies and still do them for some subjects. When we covered a unit study on trains, for science we studied how the water is converted to steam and powers a steam engine. For history, we learned about the history of the railroad and about the Freedom train that toured the United States and housed many important documents from American History on the train and toured many U.S. cities during 1947-1949 and then again with the American Freedom train during 1976-1977. We had so much fun with thematic units. I still research them online and gather as much inforamation and then decide what we plan on using. There is a book by Amanda Bennett called "A Unit Study Journal" which can be helpful to you.
Healthy Skeptic, Don't panic about the unit studies having to be comprehensive enough that you can find activities that span all subject areas. That is a fun way to learn, but by no means required. For instance, last year, we did what we called "Unit Studies" for 6th grade American History, because we wanted to study SPECIFIC things that are not long enough for a year ar a semester, but not covered in depth in any textbooks. We did units on The Boston Freedom Trail Plymouth The Trail of Tears/Removal Act of 1830 The Underground Railroad Geography of the extensive River System in our state. Each of these things did not necessarily reach into other subjects (other than naturally overlapping activities that covered concepts in Science, Art, Personal management, etc.). We were able to find resources & inexpensive books, and to take field trips for each of them which was an amazing privilege last year. Have fun, Miller
