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Welcome with me Yvie to my blog today!  She’ll be talking about How to create a unit study for your homeschool. 

Unit studies provide an in-depth (and often hands-on) approach to learning about any topic your students are interested in, providing individualized instruction and instilling a love of learning! 

It may seem overwhelming at first, but creating a unit study is easier than you think! There are just five simple steps to creating a unit study…

What Will You Study?

What is your child interested in? Unit studies are an excellent schooling method for child-led families! To begin, choose one of your child’s interests (e.g., dinosaurs, princesses, Minecraft) and create studies around it. These might include science, history, geography, math, writing, literature, or life skills…anything relating to the topic!

If you want to do regular unit studies, keep a running list of ideas to pull from, and try to plan a couple of weeks in advance. This will give you time to gather the needed materials. Elementary and middle schoolers are going to have more leeway with unit studies, while high schoolers will need more stringent activities to keep up with graduation requirements.

How Much Time Will You Devote To This Unit?

A unit study planner is a must! This one covers a full year, with room for five in-depth units, one per season plus two in the summer. This is a good pace for unit studies if you are using them to complement the regular curriculum. If your entire curriculum is unit studies, you’re going to want to do a couple each month.

Deciding which route to take depends on your schooling style. If you prefer a regular curriculum, but want to incorporate Fun Fridays, you’ll want the relaxed pace. If you prefer a child-led, or interested-based, school, then the more aggressive approach to unit studies will be a better fit.

Either way, the Unit Study Planner is a good place to get organized with the first few units you cobble together. It includes pages for monthly, weekly, and daily unit study plans – this way you can choose the schedule which works best for you! Once you’ve got a few units under your belt, you’ll discover which groove works best for your family!

What Activities Do You Want To Do?

Are you a bookish family? Do you tend toward the outdoors? Prefer to learn through video? Choose something that is the base for your unit….your ‘spine,’ if you will. If you’re a travelling family, you might have location or event-based studies, such as the Boston Tea Party, NASA Space Center, or the Gettysburg Address.

No matter what you choose, you’ll want to include a few basic components:

• Books – Visit the library and find a selection of fiction and non-fiction books related to the topic. Bonus points for learning to use the card catalog!

• Videos – There’s nothing like visual representation of more difficult concepts, so scout DVDs and YouTube for related videos.

• Field Trips – A day trip to the zoo or science museum, or even a longer overnight trip to a big attraction…all of these fit the bill.

• Hands-on Activities – No one likes sitting at a desk all day, so get up and make something! This might include STEM kits, cooking projects, or art projects.

Schedule or Fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants?

For my personality, there’s no question here…being Type A, I’m always going to answer ‘schedule.’ But maybe you prefer to wing it. That’s ok…that’s the beauty of homeschooling! You get to tailor things to your family.

Whatever your method, you’re going to need to plan at least a little bit…if for no other reason than to have the necessary items to complete your unit. You’ll need to know what ingredients / materials are needed for hands-on projects, and also what resources (books, dvds, etc) are needed for the research and informational portion of the unit study.

You’ll probably want to know ahead of time where the museum is and when it’s open…though you might just get in the car and decide to impulsively visit. It happens. Choose which method works best for you, and your family, and roll with it.

Are You Keeping Track?

Record-keeping doesn’t have to be difficult, especially with elementary and middle school students. The creation of a lapbook or notebook adequately shows what they have learned. With upper grades students, a portfolio that includes books read, photographs of hands-on activities, and research projects will document the unit.

Need Some Help Getting Started?

Homeschool On the Range has several pre-made unit study bundles in their Cottage Shoppe! These are literature-based units that cover vocabulary, critical thinking, history, geography, and learning through hands-on activities. Use coupon code NOVELSTUDY50 to snag your bundle at 50% off through March 31^st, 2021! 

Yvie is a veteran homeschooling mom and the high school counselor for The Homeschool House, a non-profit organization.  She helps to create unit studies and enjoys helping other families on their homeschool journey.  When not teaching or counseling, she enjoys reading, spending time in her garden, and traveling the country with her boys.  You can find her at Homeschool On the Range, on Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest.

I would like to welcome Amanda to the blog today.  She offered to share a post with you my lovely readers on 4 Important Tips for Choosing the Perfect Homeschool Curriculum.   Doesn’t that sound interesting?  Don’t you just want to dive in and learn more? 

You’ve decided to homeschool!

Congrats! This is such an exciting and scary time for you I’m sure.

Once a parent decides to homeschool their first thought is to find a curriculum. But it shouldn’t be.

When you decide to start homeschooling, there is a lot of thought that needs to go into your homeschool before you even begin thinking about which homeschool curriculum you will use.

Today I’m going to share 4 important tips that you need to consider before you even begin looking for the perfect homeschool curriculum.

After you go through these, you may even begin to wonder if a curriculum is really necessary or how to even use a curriculum in the right way.

No worries! These 4 tips will help you get a better understanding of what your homeschool day will look like and what you will want to teach.

It’s Not All About the Curriculum

choice in curriculumFirst, let’s talk about what a curriculum is and how it can best serve you on your homeschooling journey.

A curriculum is essentially a roadmap with an end destination that will most likely have a million and one pit stops along the way.

Learning is not linear. If it was, we wouldn’t have a choice in curriculum because they would all be the same.

Every child will have different interests and be ready to learn different skills at different times. We each have our own unique learning timeline.

The experiences we have and the environment we grow up in is what shapes that unique learning timeline. This is why every curriculum is different.

How to Choose the Perfect Homeschool Curriculum

Instead of looking at arbitrary assessment markers, like standards and grade levels, we’re going to deep dive into your child and your goals. Follow the 4 tips below and you’ll walk away with a better understanding of your child and how you want your homeschool journey to go.

Tip #1: Define Your Goals

The very first thing you want to think about are the goals you want for your children. I recommend setting only 3-4 goals per year. To do this, you’ll first start by thinking about where your child is in each important skill (math, reading, and writing). Then set specific goals that will help them move forward in that skill.

Do not…

I cannot emphasize this enough…

Do not go look at school standards or grade level requirements. They are not developmentally appropriate, nor do they take into consideration your child’s unique learning timeline.

The only way to enhance your child’s skill is to move forward one small step at a time.

With the homeschool parents that I work with, I suggest setting one goal for math, one for writing, and one for reading. Each one of those goals should move them forward and enhance their skill in some way.

Now that you know your goals for your child, you can begin looking for a curriculum that will help you meet those goals.

Tip #2: Figure Out Your Educational Philosophy

We are not going to identify with one particular method of homeschooling here.

I want you to take a few minutes to reflect on your past educational experiences. What was school or education like for you?

Then spend time reflecting on what you want education to mean to your child.

Take your answers to create your own educational philosophy. This will take bits and pieces of different educational methods. Once you have your educational philosophy, you will have a better understanding of what type (or method) of homeschool curriculum you can focus on.

Do you see how using these tips are already eliminating so many choices in homeschool curriculum? And we’re not even done yet!

Tip #3: Understand Your Child’s Learning Style

I see many homeschool parents get confused about their child’s learning style. They tend to look for a curriculum that’s very heavy in learning with their preferred learning style.

But here’s the thing…

Every child learns best through hands-on experiences, especially in the early elementary ages. It doesn’t matter what their learning style may be.

But it is important to know your child’s learning style and combine it with hands-on experiences.

I recommend finding a curriculum that uses your child’s preferred learning style as the main method for learning then follows that with hands-on experiences to help make that new knowledge concrete.

But here’s the catch…

A curriculum should not focus on just one learning style. A good curriculum will incorporate multiple learning styles. Just because your child may have a preferred learning style, doesn’t mean they can’t learn with another learning style. It would get boring if every lesson was taught in the same way.

Teaching in multiple learning styles also gives your child a chance to look at topics/skills from a different viewpoint.

So I may have confused you there…

The bottom line is to find a curriculum where the main way of learning follows your child’s preferred learning style, but also incorporates hands-on activities and other methods of learning.

Tip #4 Discover Your Ideal Homeschool Day

This one is similar to figuring out your educational philosophy, but it takes into account the fact that you’re home.

Spend some time reflecting on what your ideal homeschool day would look like. It’s important to  know what this is.

Obviously, having a perfect homeschool day isn’t going to happen often. Kids are kids!

But if your curriculum doesn’t allow for you to even attempt your ideal homeschool day, then you’ll never get that dream come true. This one is all about having the possibility to experience your ideal homeschool day. 

Make sure your curriculum will allow for that possibility.

By going through and reflecting all these 4 tips before looking at a homeschool curriculum, you should be able to eliminate a lot of choices.

What about you?

Did you enjoy Amanda’s post on 4 Important Tips for Choosing the Perfect Homeschool Curriculum?  Are there any tips you think she missed?  How do you go about choosing curriculum? 

Amanda helps homeschoolers raise self-motivated learners by bringing the adventure of learning right into your living room. She’s the creator of The Captivated Learner and The Learning Lifestyle. Amanda is a single, entrepreneur, homeschooling mama of two kiddos. You can follow her on Facebook.

Guess what!   Amanda agreed to guest post for me today.  Isn’t that great?  Welcome her with me to my blog today.  🙂  She’ll be talking about Four Essentials of Child-led learning.   Student led learning has taken us through world war 1 this year.  

“Mommy, what’s this?” Sicily questioned as she pulled out her kids’ meal toy.

“It’s an arctic fox.” I replied.

“Oh! I like him.”

“Would you like to see if we can find a YouTube video about an arctic fox?”

We headed to the tablet to look up videos on the arctic fox to learn a bit more about this little stuffed animal she got.

The video we found was a snippet from a documentary with an arctic fox searching for food. These little guys hop up and nose dive into the snow to catch small prey.

Sicily giggled non-stop while watching the fox catch mice in the snow.

From there we read books, did a few process art creations, and even pretend we were arctic foxes hunting for mice in the snow.

This love of arctic foxes extended into more arctic animals, so we started to study the polar bear, penguins, and orca.We learned about blubber, ice, and how penguins stay dry.

All this learning from a single fast food kids’ meal toy.

That’s the beauty of child-led learning. One small experience can spark months of learning and many different avenues to travel down.

What is Child-Led Learning?

In our house we follow a child-led approach to learning. That means I follow my kiddos interests for topics of study. Then I follow their lead with academic skills as well. I wait until they are 100% motivated and ready to learn each specific skill.

But it wasn’t always so smooth. I had many failures in our quest to learning at home. But through all those failures and over 11 years of teaching experience, I’ve discovered the 4 essentials to child-led learning.

4 Essentials to Child-Led Learning

Child-led learning doesn’t mean you have to give up all control. You are responsible for the 4 essentials.

When you get these 4 essentials to child-led learning correct, your days become peaceful and your child begins to learn quickly.

Child-Led Essential # 1: Encouraging Environment

You’ve probably heard from a Reggio approach to learning that the environment is the third teacher.

Well I’ve always been an overachiever. I strongly believe that your environment is the first teacher.

Your environment is more than just your homeschool room. It’s your whole life style.

Child-led learning is more of a lifestyle than a learning approach.

This also includes the experiences you give your child, and most importantly your everyday experiences. Have your kiddo help you do household chores, including help pay the bills, cook dinner, and fold the laundry.

The environment in which you provide your child and the experiences you give them, is what ultimately decides their unique learning timeline.

You control the environment.  The environment controls what your child learns.

Your child controls WHEN and HOW they learn.

Child-Led Essential #2: Relaxed Routine

Having an environment that supports your child’s interests and the skills you want them to learn isn’t enough.

You need a relaxed routine that gives them plenty of time to explore in the environment you created.

On a typical day, we plan to have 2-3 hours in our homeschool room with no structure except our morning meeting.

During this time, my kiddos explore whatever I’ve place in the environment. There are always open ended toys, learning games for specific skills they are working on, and invitations to play, create, and explore.

I have a table with materials/books from our current theme for them to explore at any moment.

We try to follow the Montessori 3 hour work period. During the first hour, my kiddos explore and choose freely what they want to play/learn.

The second hour, called false fatigue, usually ends up with them dancing, playing music, or chasing each other around in a circle. This is the hardest part, but according to Montessori it’s needed to reach maximum concentration.

 This second hour is sort of like their coffee break. I tend to leave a snack on the table once they hit this time that they can choose to eat if they want. Most of the time, we cut back on a lot of the chaos of this hour because they almost always choose to sit and eat a snack.

About 45 minutes later it starts to get quiet again. The kiddos are entering the third hour where deep concentration happens. Their brains are ready to learn new and more challenging skills.

 This is the time I will invite them to do the works I want them to do. Sometimes I will ask them to join me in an activity whereas other times I will sit down and start working on the activity myself. Most of the time they will join me, but not always. It’s their choice.

Child-Led Essential #3: Simple, Child-Led Activities

Learning doesn’t require a huge storage of materials or complicated activities. I rarely go out and buy new materials. We use what is available around the house or out in nature. Many of our activities are done with rocks and sticks.

Have you ever heard the saying “Less is More?”

It’s so true when it comes to educating our kiddos. The simplest of activities will be the ones that attract them the most and will have the most learning.

Why?

Because with simple activities and materials, the brain only has one thing to concentrate on.

When you have a bunch of moving parts their brains will most likely focus on the skill you don’t want them to learn.

Take for example, the ever popular preschool activity of tracing letters on a line.

It seems simple, but is it really?

In order for the child to trace on the line, they need to first have the development and strength in their eyes to focus on the lines.

Then they need the hand strength and hand-eye coordination to be able to stay in between the lines.

On top of that, they need good fine motor skills in order to hold the pencil correctly, so they have the pencil control to stand in between the lines.

And last, which is the main goal of this activity…

They need to form the letter correctly.

In order to do this activity perfectly, your child needs to be developmentally ready in all those areas which doesn’t happen until around 5, sometimes even 6, years old.

Keep it simple…

Hand them a blank piece of paper and a pencil.

Their only focus then will be on letter formation.

With enough practice, your child will begin to write smaller and smaller as their muscles develop. There is no need to ever introduce lines until about first or second grade.

Child-Led Essential #4: Trust the Process

This essential to child-led learning is the most important, but the hardest of them all.

You must trust the process, trust yourself, and most importantly trust your child and their unique learning timeline.

Remember…

You control the environment.

Your environment controls what your child learns.

Your child decides when and how they will learn it.

Set up your environment for success by providing materials/books for learning about their interests and the skills they are ready to learn then trust that your child will learn what needs to be learned on their own timeline.

Ready to get started with child-led learning? Click here to download our getting started guide.

To learn more about how we implement child-led learning into our homeschool preschool, click here for our Ultimate Guide to Homeschool Preschool.

About the Author

Amanda is the owner of Learning Through Experiences where she helps beautiful mama’s homeschool their kiddos using a child-led approach without spending a lot of time planning & prepping. She is a former elementary and preschool teacher with over 11 years experience. Amanda has 2 kiddos of her own, Sicily & Kade, who follow this exact child-led approach that she advocates. Amanda is the creator of Learning Through Experiences: A Child-Led Curriculum. In her spare time, she likes to read, garden, and relax in a bubble bath.