Homeschooling

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.