One of the difficulties homeschool moms often run into, if they want to create their own unit studies, is figuring out what activities to include.  I have a process I go through for this that helps me create well-rounded units.  (I’ve been thinking about writing that up in detail as a class.  Would there be an interest in that?)  Here are a few of the “tricks” I use for planning homeschool unit study activities:

1. Consider the Skills the Student Needs

If there are particular skills you want a given student to learn in the coming year, are there also particular unit topics where that fits in well?  Go ahead and plug them in.

For example, if you need to work on letter-writing and you’re studying explorers and business, either of those might be a great opportunity for letter-writing practice.  Entomology maybe not so much.  (Although you could write to a career entomologist!)

2. Think Through Subjects

One of the most relevant things I do, when it comes to deciding on unit study activities, is to work my way through a list of subjects.

Have I included history activities in this unit?  Bible?  Art?  And so on.

You probably won’t have notable amounts of every subject in every unit, but you should have most subjects in every unit, and going through the list systematically will help you avoid skipping over something by accident.

3. Keep Files

When I come across something that looks like it would make a good unit study activity (or information source) for a particular topic, I save it.

I have Pinterest boards for this purpose.  I also have topical folders on my hard drive.  When I’m ready to work on a given unit, I can go back through the relevant folders/boards/whatever and pull out what fits.

Have tips of your own for putting together activities for a homeschool unit study?  Leave them in the comments!