Simple Guide to Creating Your Own Unit Studies

When I started home schooling I was such a Nervous Nelly about getting everything right. I wanted the perfect formula and the exact instructions to do this thing to the max. I ordered my boxed curriculum and followed it to the "T". After 2 years and oodles of confidence later, I felt there was a better way for my kid's learning style. I noticed they were reading and filling out workbooks but were not retaining the information long term.
I eventually decided to continue a curriculum for math and language arts, but everything else needed a complete overhaul. There are awesome websites and companies that offer unit studies on every subject that you can think of. This of course comes at a price. If you have several children with different passions and learning styles, that is a lot of money to invest. It is my goal to give you simple steps at creating your own easy and thorough unit studies that will open up a world of learning on an array of subjects for your kids.

1 Be a collector of information
I am constantly picking up brochures, books, magazines, workbooks, on-line articles, websites and more. As you collect information on different subjects organize them by subject in one notebook, box or anything that works for you. Know your children's passions and gifts and you can collect things that they love and can become experts on. These can be topics or people that have made a big difference in history.

For Example: I have an entire box of brochures, coloring books, fact books, puzzles, games and more all centered around Space and Astronauts. I have handed this box to my 8 year old and for 2 days he worked on a list of 25 facts on Space and Astronauts.

2 Creating an Outline
Create a list of questions that will exhaust every aspect of the topic. Questions should include the historical information, scientific background, important people involved and how our world has been affected by this topic. You can also create art projects to go with the topic.

3 Age Appropriate Changes
Depending on the age of your child, you will need to create a different outline to help them through the assignment. For example: A 2nd grader can use the same collection of information on the topic of trains that an 11th grader uses. The outcome will be more elaborate based on the level of understanding.

4 Get Started
Present your child with the collection of information and explain your expectations. Take your child to the library for additional research as well as giving them monitored time on the internet to investigate information.

5 For younger children (3rd grade and under), I generally assign the unit study in the form of a list of facts regarding the topic or person they are studying. For example: 25 Facts About the Civil War. 4th grade and above can do the study in paragraph/report form answering all of the questions you prepared.

Unit Studies give your child the chance to study things they are passionate about and they allow them to see the history, science and art behind every topic. It makes learning fun and it teaches your children how to be investigative learners and problem solvers .

Have Fun!