Why Unit Studies?

At our house, we like unit studies.  They’re an easy way for us to use living books without having the whole library checked out at once (‘though my husband may think we have the whole library checked out, anyway!), and a good way to allow the girls to study something where everything is inter-related so they have mental “hooks” on which to hang the information.

Sometimes it has other benefits, as well.  For instance, I planned ahead of time to schedule our “family history” unit for right about now.  Since it’s our family history that Ariel is studying, it’s information with which I am already familiar, which makes it much easier for me to oversee her schoolwork right now with a new baby.  If we’d been doing a more “academic” topic right now, I would have to worry about whether I know the information, knowing what she needs to know, etc., and it would just take a lot more brain power and planning on my part.

Unit studies can be used as the primary means of education in a particular family, as it is for us, or they can be used just once in a while to spice things up or add a little bit of fun to the schooling.  Either way, some of my readers may be wondering how to go about planning a unit.

Planning a Unit Study

Well, around here, there isn’t a lot of planning of objectives for a unit.  I try to have enough of an overview myself that I would know if my children did not come back to me with some decently well-rounded information on the unit.  Apart from that, we generally just figure that if the assigned reading gets read, the appropriate content will be covered.  How much direction I offer varies, based on the unit and on our resources.

Sophia isn’t reading yet, so she generally just “tags along” as we study, but Ariel can read well on her own.  Sometimes I require her to read a few basic texts cover-to-cover, and then let her skim the others for “new” content.  Sometimes I require certain pages from certain books.  (Sticky notes work well for this.)  Sometimes I assign her particular projects or experiments, and other times I just have her choose her own.  It really depends on how likely I think she is to pick something constructive from what she finds in the books, and/or how critical I think certain concepts are to complete coverage of the topic.  For some units, I have forms for her to fill out, which are essentially a fill-in-the-blank version of writing a report (which we’ll move on to when she’s a bit older).  These forms help her know what information she’s looking for as she reads.

As a rule, I just pull out whatever resources we have on the subject, then supplement with library resources — books, DVD’s, and or CD’s.  I also have a book I put together of suggested resources, including related Scripture verses, etc., which I am gradually working on getting online.  (See my unit studies blog here.)

Our way is not the only way!  Some people prefer to have things more planned out.  If this is you, check out Weiser Academy’s blog post about creating a unit study.  It’s pretty thorough. 🙂

We like to do notebooks (for older children) and/or shutterbooks (Lapbooks TM – for younger children) to present the information we’ve learned.  There are pre-printed shutterbook packages available, but I prefer for my children to make theirs from scratch.  In my opinion, they don’t really learn any more from a pre-built shutterbook than they do from a pre-printed workbook; they learn more if they process and present the information themselves.  These finished products have the added advantage of providing an easy means of review that they are highly motivated to look at again and again. 🙂

Resources I like:

• Unit Studies Made Easy, by Valerie Bendt (The introduction to this book offers a great summary of our philosophy of education, even for those who don’t plan to use unit studies.)
• The Ultimate Lap Book Handbook, by Tammy Duby & Cyndy Regeling
• The Big Book of Books, by Dinah Zike
• my unit studies blog
• Google 🙂  (for maps, etc.)