FAQ

What is a Unit Study?

Many times I am asked, either personally or through the many email lists that I'm on, about unit studies.  Not that I'm an expert (see this page for those people and sites ), but I believe strongly that for my family we should continue down the road of unit studies mixed with a few curriculum built studies. (Math is hard to include in a unit study for a solid foundation in math, not impossible, but hard.)

I once sat in Jennifer Steward's workshop on unit studies and she said, "You know you have a unit study when you have 10 good books on a certain topic."  I have taken that to heart.  We use good books as our main "textbooks" and following the Charlotte Mason philosophy of education, we use "living books."  A living book is one that make the subject being studied come alive for the reader/student.  It is the kind of book that you can't put down; one where you want to keep reading.  I can tell when I have one because my kids say (if not yell), "One more chapter mom, one more, PLEASE!!!"

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What do they include?

In our units we usually have one read aloud book (usually the "best" book we can find) and then I find four to ten books that are kids read; books they are required to read (usually just two or three) on their own about that subject.  This usually tend to be fiction, but that isn't always the case.  There are many great "living" books out there on most any subject, finding them is the hard part.  (I have started a few book lists just so I can find living books)  I also have 10-40 information books in baskets as we study the topic.  When my children have "school reading" they may pick from these books.  They often pick from these book when we don't have "school reading."

Resource books are just that; books that have tons of information in them on the given subject.  They can be very simple books like the Eyewitness/Usborne text block type books or they can be as complicated as an encyclopedia.  These books may be written for an adults so I try to go through each book for content, but that isn't always possible.  (I will make that note whenever possible on our list of books.)  My children will spend many hours just looking through and reading these books, especially when the subject interests them.

I love the multiple intelligence idea of learning and teaching so I try to include something from the major intelligences that my children tend to exhibit.  I always try to include these things in any unit we are doing:

Donna Young provides this worksheet to help in the planning.

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What to study?

I advocate doing a science unit and then a history one and rotating throughout the year, but that really hasn't happened in our family.  Mostly because my strength is history and my husband does a weekly science class with the children during a lunch break.  We always try to throw in a short fun unit just to mix things up, but it seems every time we do we have a family crisis and we just end up reading a subject to death.  I figure getting 8 good unit studies a year is a good goal, each unit taking between 4 to 8  weeks.  Since I have 3 children that are "required" by state law to be in school, I let them each choose a subject and then I pick two others.  They are guided by me in their choices (what can we do and what can we not do) and most of the time they all want the same things anyway (since they are all boys). Sometimes we will pick a unit based on what we are doing as a family.  We picked Lewis and Clark because we want to spend a few weeks following their trail.  We picked  Leonardo da Vinci because we wanted to study art (and that branched into an extended unit on the Renaissance).  We studied Brazil because their dad lived there for 22 months while serving a mission. (I think you get the picture.) Some are based on books we wanted to read (Michelangelo case in point--"From the Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler".)

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How do you know you are done & how do you end it?

I have learned that when the kids say, "Not that again," we have reached the end of that unit.  That is a signal that they have lost interest and will no longer be open to learning.  I do try to keep it fun, but even with fun they get burnt out on a subject.  It is time to conclude that unit and move on.  My usually reply is, "Bare with me, let's 'kill' such and such or so and so."  We then take about a week to finish up the projects. papers or whatever and spend the rest of the week in transition from one unit to the other.

We like to end the unit with some sort of show and tell.  If the kids did a report/project then we have a night of report giving.  We invite dad, other friends, families etc. to join us for the reports.  I usually let the kids come up with the end of the unit thing because the standard is "two page report with three sources quoted--three pages for the oldest."  They seldom choose that unless the topic lends itself to a report.  Here are a few ways we have "creatively" ended a project:

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How do you know you have covered it all?

Oh, you NEVER cover it all, but you get a good foundation for that subject and then move on.  Once you have started a unit, you will stop doing that unit, but you will continue to learn and add to that unit.  When we finished Lewis and Clark, or as we say, "killed L&C," we noticed that their was a show on a cable channel about the Missouri River and how author Stephen Ambrose was helping restore it to be more like what Lewis and Clark saw.  We had to watch it and we learned even more "stuff".  So it is never done and you will never cover it all.

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What about package units?

I have yet to buy a package unit and followed it word for word, page by page.  That isn't to say that can't be done, but with my children and our style of learning, it wouldn't work.  But that is the beauty of doing a unit study. I use the package units, books, web pages etc as places to gather information and ideas to make our unit alive. 

I did our first unit on Egypt following the Greenleaf Press guide and soon found that our style differed than that written in the book, BUT having that book (or any like it) may give a first time unit study homeschooling mom the road map to follow as they figure out their style of teaching/learning.  Jennifer Steward has an excellent book on the "how to's" of a unit study.  I have not read any other, but I have looked at many of the links listed below and gained a wealth of knowledge on how to put a unit together and use it.  Once you have a unit under your belt--or two, you will get the hang of it.

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Hints, give us hints:

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Books that help us:

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What have you studied?

Have a look at some of the things we have studied in the upper left hand corner or are studying or even better some of the stuff we want to study. Click here for a site map of our units.  If you have links, books or other information, please share with us at waldsfe@hotmail.com

Thanks and come back soon as I know we will add more to this as the year goes by.

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