By Lara Saldana of Heart Spark Homeschool
Unit studies are a way of homeschooling that takes a topic of interest and dives into it, often wrapping up other subjects inside it at the same time.
For some families this is an occasional break from their normal school. Others may use it only for a theme like a holiday or historical event. Still others (including myself) tend to let unit studies take the lead and squeeze in the required learning in and around it.
One of the biggest advantages to unit studies is that you are taking something your child already wants to learn about and feeding it, creating a natural love of learning.
Since we are so focused on interest-led learning, I thought I would share my tips on turning those interests into unit studies!
#1. Inspiring a Culture of Creativity:
If asking questions and wanting to know more isn’t a normal and natural environment for your family, you can instigate this by prompting the conversations and asking your kids what they think.
Children are naturally curious and usually ask more questions than we have time or patience for. If you are intentional about fueling the learning with those interests, you have made a creativity culture.
Do your kids love all vehicles? Do they ask you questions about bugs? Do they dream of becoming an astronaut?
Pay attention to these points of interest. You do not have to have the answers or energy right away. But start responding to these by saying “We will have to learn more about that!”
ACTION TIP: Make a list of the interests or questions your children have. You now have a syllabus of topics to dig into.
#2. Plan Your Connection Points:
One of the great things about unit studies is that you can sneak in other learning under the disguise of the interesting topic. For example, my children wanted to learn about puffins.
Of course, we learned about puffins themselves. We also learned geography when we learned about where they live, the difference between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and some about the cultures of Scotland and Iceland.
We also learned about the grammar rules for two f’s together and “ea” (because of the words “Puffin” and “seabird”) and found more examples of those rules. We practiced handwriting, spelling, creative writing, and grammar by writing about the puffin.
We also drew and painted the puffin and had several crafts. There are so many ways to fit other subjects into your topic of interest. Don’t forget history, either. This is often an easy way to make history exciting!
ACTION TIP: Consider and note what other subjects you can connect to the main one. Don’t forget Language Arts concepts, too!
#3. Utilize your Resources:
We live in an era that offers so many resources it is so easy to research any topic. We usually start at the library and find as many books about our topics (and the connection points) as we can.
Next, we utilize YouTube nearly every day by searching for videos that relate to our topic. I also use Pinterest to find fun and interesting craft ideas to jazz up the educational stuff.
Don’t underestimate the power of simply making journal pages about the facts they learned and drawing their favorite things.
Allowing kids to decorate a wall or board for their topic is another great way of building excitement for learning.
Besides those free resources, there are also tons of amazing paid unit studies that provide all the research and organization already for you.
ACTION TIP: Find books, videos, and crafts for your topic. You don’t have to overthink this and make it show-stopping. You can keep it simple and fun and still have an amazing unit study.
#4. Think outside the box!
Learning with unit studies is a fun and engaging way to make your school day better. This helps your kids come to the table with a “what are we learning about today?” attitude vs “Do we have to?”
Take a step back and consider how you can encourage this culture of creativity even more.
Maybe you fold paper airplanes and draw a bird you’re learning about on it. Maybe this leads to also learning about aerodynamics and then onto the history of flight.
Maybe you book a field trip to an aquarium to learn more about sharks. Maybe this leads to learning about the filtration system needed to keep the animals alive. Maybe this leads to an interest in engineering.
The sky is the limit. Go capture their passions and throw fuel on that fire … and have fun with it!
ACTION TIP: Go ask your kids what the first topic should be!
