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How to Easily Add Language Arts to Homeschool Unit Studies (& Resources)

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

One hurdle for delight-directed learning is how to easily add language arts to homeschool unit studies.

The fear of missing something huge can keep some tied to a boxed curriculum. The beauty of unit studies is being able to study topics which ignite your child’s interests.

With that being said, language art skills need to be applied to bodies of knowledge instead of learning language arts skills in isolation. This approach to learning the components of language arts makes it meaningful.

How to Easily Add Language Arts to Homeschool Unit Studies (& Resources)

5 Ways to Add Language Arts to Unit Studies

Look at these 5 ways to easily add language arts to homeschool unit studies.

1. Pair a living book with your unit study.

Although you want to include plenty of living books, depending on the unit study topic you may be using more reference type books.

So if you want to include many elements of language arts, choose one well-written living book to accompany your unit study.

Choose the living book with these things in mind:

  • Aim for the middle to highest reading level of all your children.
  • Keep in mind that it’s easier to scale down for language art components than it is to scale up for your highest level reader. Choose a higher reading level if in doubt.
  • In addition, make sure you understand not only the literary elements like plot, setting, and characters, but the theme too. It’s important for a smooth transition for the theme of the one main living book to connect with the unit study topic. The easiest themes for us in the beginning were ones like good v. evil, courage, and persistence. For example, I chose Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss for our ocean unit study. Surviving on an island as a family if you got shipwrecked appealed as a theme to my kids and is a smooth tie-in to the ocean theme.
  • You can search for booklist ideas here on my site, but here are some to get you started.

Choosing the right living book means the difference with themes which ignite expressive conversations in your house about your unit study theme and your unit study falling flat and being shallow.

Language Arts For Unit Studies

In addition, look at these other components of language arts which can naturally be pulled from a living book:

  • defining vocabulary words;
  • dictation;
  • narration;
  • copywork;
  • outlining;
  • reciting an oral speech;
  • reading; and
  • topics for writing or essays.

The bottom line is that a well-written living book can equal a powerful inclusive language arts component.

When the living book is tied to the unit study topic which has already piqued your child’s interest, you’ve set yourself up for success from the start.

That is why I also love using Literary Adventures for Kids.

You choose a book and your kids can do a self-paced online language art course. Doing an online self-paced course where your child chooses the book is a great tie-in for the language arts component.

Look at my post Online Homeschool High School Poetry (No Teaching Involved).

2. Use Quick Reference Materials Like BarCharts.

Next, I use quick study guides. Realizing how beautifully I could zero in on the exact skill my kids needed to work on, I use them frequently.

Because Quick Study Guides can put information in a nutshell and organize skill by grade level, I use them as general guides.

Look at a few tips on how to use these quick guides:

  • Keep language arts concise and straightforward by learning fewer elements.
  • With my guide in hand, I can pair the objectives on the quick study guide with our main living book to shore up my kids weak areas in language arts.
  • My kids put the guides in their notebooks to use as reference for their writing or grammar. I made copies and we used a single hole punch to add them to their notebook.
  • Also, I could use the guides as a way to orally test my kids or if I wanted to create written quizzes I had a guide.
  • Likewise as my children grew, they can independently review the guides as memorization tools.
How to Easily Add Language Arts to Homeschool Unit Studies (& Resources)

Because quick study guides focus on fewer elements of language arts, our language arts focus could be as complicated or as gentle as we need.

Besides, I’m not paying for a full language arts curriculum, but choosing exactly what my kids need to focus on. Did I mention they last years?

Also, look at this How to Put Together a Homeschooled High School Writer’s Notebook & Free Resources because we added them there. Along with adding free resources online creating a language arts notebooks works.

Add Language Arts to Homeschool Unit Studies

Too, if you live near a Barnes and Noble, I’ve collected several of their guides which are called Quamut. They seem to have more guides about hobbies, but I’ve been able to cull through the quamuts for help in language arts.

However, the SparkCharts are another line of handy references which I love also.

Don’t underestimate the power of the simple and uncomplicated to teach straightforward grammar, punctuation, and types of writing.

You’ll love filling up your bookshelves and notebooks with quick and handy references to get to the point while teaching language arts.

3. Use an Ungraded, Multi-Level Resource.

Then, one of my earliest purchases was one of my best purchases which has stood the test of time.

Kathryn Stout created a series of how-to or reference books for subjects which are basically guides for grades K to 12.

My first purchase was Comprehensive Composition and I used it extensively in my unit studies.

Like the author, Kathryn Stout stated on her site she wrote the Design-A-Study guides to provide both a framework of objectives and detailed methods for teaching basic subjects effectively.

Homeschool Language Arts

For example, having a scope and sequence for composition which can be applied to any unit study for all your kids at one time is sanity-saving.

Equally, despite the age differences between your kids reference guides which lays out objectives and goals keeps composition related to the topic.

What I learned from teaching my kids about composition until high school is that boredom springs from writing about meaningless topics.

An ungraded, multi-level resource gives you freedom to learn how to write well on topics which are meaningful to your family.

However, another useful feature of filling your shelves with resources like these is that you’re using them for years. Unlike curriculum where you’re constantly switching out, a multi-age resource is timeless.

Look at few more resources for multiple grades:

Also, another long time keeper in the homeschool world is the book If You’re Trying to Teach Kids How to Write . . . Revised Edition: You’ve Gotta Have This Book! which is from Preschool to 12.

Having books to give you the big picture along with details of how to implement language arts daily keeps unit studies fun. Plus you know you’re not really missing any big language arts gap.

Then, other newer versions of helps for multiple levels have come along like Everything You Need to Ace English Language Arts in One Big Fat Notebook.

4. Play games.

Also, playing games is another fun and easy way to add language arts to unit studies.

While playing games is a fun way to learn language arts, it’s not always a smooth tie-in to a unit study topic. However, I love having options.

I use games sometimes to keep language arts front and center if I don’t have an exact language art tie-in to our current unit study.

  • Another favorite is Scrabble. Attempt to think of words used in your unit study and spell them. It helps with vocabulary too.
  • Mad Libs are timeless and fun play.

Don’t forget that I have the Ultimate Unit Study Planner. Having an eye for detail and creating many unit studies with multiple levels of kids, I know you’ll love it.

5. Free Curriculum Online.

Then of course nothing beats free – ever. However, I didn’t list free resources first because sometimes it’s harder to use free resources.

Not always related to your unit study curriculum, free curriculum can be hard to tie to your subject.

So what I’ve learned through the years is to cover the parts of language art which naturally fit into my current unit study.

Then, I can add in supplementary or free resources.

How to Easily Add Language Arts to Homeschool Unit Studies (& Resources)

Do not let fear of missing something make you miss out on delight-directed learning.

Fill your shelves with more how-to books so that you truly enjoy the freedom of homeschooling in the way that best fits your children.

Do you have any favorite multi-level teaching resources or ways you add language arts to your unit studies?

You’ll love some of these other helps:

Hugs and love ya,

What You Must Know to Teach High School Unit Studies

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Until my sons reached high school, I didn’t know if my unit study approach would meld with tracking credits and courses. Check out my how to homeschool high school page for awesome tips.

Also, there didn’t really seem an abundance of prepared high school unit studies.

Between determining if unit studies were a good fit for high school and understanding record keeping, it was a lot to wrap my mind around.

Until my sons reached high school, I didn't know if my unit study approach would meld with tracking credits and courses. Also, there didn't really seem an abundance of prepared high school unit studies. Click here to read these 3 must know tips!

Sorting out myths from truth, I hope these 3 tips will help you to easily homeschool high school with unit studies. Or at least give you a beginning place.

3 Tips for Teaching High School Unit Studies

ONE/ Understand first that high school is just a continuation of the lowers grades – really!

Yes, it’s true that you’ll need to track credits and courses, but before stressing out about them, plan high school subjects like you’ve done in the lower grades.

That’s right. Begin with what you know.

In my article How to Choose the BEST Homeschool Lesson Planning Pages for THIS Year, I not only give you tips on how to do that, but each lesson plan form lists subjects by general categories; math, language arts, science, history and electives are the framework of well-rounded out high school courses.

It’s not hard to plan when you understand that you’re covering the same basic subjects albeit in more depth analyzing views instead of just a question answer format like your child did in younger grades.

TWO/ Look for resources which teach 2:1 or two-fer resources.

A two-fer resource is another secret tip to homeschooling teens.

Using a resource which teaches two subjects is vital when your child enters high school.

You don’t want your time wasted and neither do teens.

More important though is the reason that unit studies rocked in the younger grades is the same reason which holds true for high school.

Learning makes more sense when subjects are tied together instead of studied as separate subjects. Additionally, unit studies have always been a research-based approach.

This is a skill which is needed on into adulthood.

Living Books for Unit Studies

Resist giving up your unit study approach because it may require a bit more time to put together.

Sure, it’s easy to assign a text book and move on, but you and I know that high school is just hard sometimes. It’s a challenge to plan but still doable.

Begin again with something you know. Look at these things you may already know how and are doing with your kids in the younger grades.

  • Reading history living books and having your child choose writing topics based on history.
  • Reading science living books and choosing writing topics based on science.
  • Reading math living books and having your child choose writing topics based on math.

Now that you understand that high school courses fall into general categories and understand to look for two-fer resources, here are some examples of how to put it together.

We love the book Undaunted Courage.

Just a side note here.

When I look at a book which can serve as a springboard for high school unit studies, I note 3 things:

  • that it’s a living book,
  • that it’s high school level so that I can legally note on my high school transcript that it’s a high school level resource,
  • and I mull over how hard it will be to add external resources to enrich the study.

Not only is your teen covering part of his credit toward history when reading Undaunted Courage , but he is covering credits for literature too. Writing is part of a literature credit.

So your teen is covering 2–3 subjects at once depending on what credits you’ve lined out for the year.

Because covering literature in high school means more than just reading, you’ll want to have a variety of resources for analyzing literature and for guiding your teen how to write well.

A literature-based unit study which has a history setting has been the easiest to start off with at the high school level.

For example, I find it a challenge to round out a history book with literature analysis than a great book suited for literature analysis.

How to Put Together High School Unit Studies

It’s been easier to add history and science of a time period to a great read.

One super helpful resource we only discovered this year and that is the Thrift Study Editions by Dover. 

Not only are the books for high school level, but each one comes with a study guide in the back. 

For example, while reading A Tale of Two Cities, we studied about the culture of France and England and learned about the issues of the French Revolution.

With a resource like that, doing unit studies are a cinch at the high school level. This brings me to the third point you want to know.

THREE/ Fill your teacher nook with specialized how-two books for you and your teen.

Tackling how to teach a subject with out a curriculum can be daunting, but you can go from research to reward if you choose specialized teaching books.

Here are a few of my favorite resources. You don’t need all of them, but I’ve used them at one time or another to round out our unit studies.

Literature Unit Studies

  • The Design-A-Study series are timeless. This series of books about science, history, and composition gives an overview of what to cover in each grade.  Instead of giving you subjects, it’s helpful because it gives you the big picture of what your child needs to know from K-12. A resource like this is especially helpful if you want to cover a skill or topic that your highschooler may have struggled with in the earlier grades.
  • Warriner’s English Complete Course. This set of books have been around for years and helps to hone writing. Christine Miller of Classical Christian said, “This excellent reference can be used throughout all three years of the dialectic to teach writing. It thoroughly covers grammar in detail, which provides a nice review for those children that need it, or for those children that missed some grammar instruction in the grammar stage. It also covers writing in detail, with a complete section on writing mechanics, usage, writing correct and clear sentences, paragraphs, and papers, the research paper, using references, and even public speaking.” Read the rest of her review here. Before we started using Rod and Staff high school levels, we used Warriner’s. Rod and Staff’s Communicating Effectively I liked one year because I felt like it was more streamlined. It helps to.understand that I used Rod and Staff in the younger grades and their grammar is very rigorous and by 8th grade formal grammar is completed. When you click the link above you can see the sample of their English and what is covered in the high school years.
  • Home Learning Year by Year: How to Design a Homeschool Curriculum from Preschool Through High School. Don’t get overwhelmed by this book. There is no need to have to read all of it. Focus only on the grade level for this year. Having a handy reference like this will guide you to subjects for each grade.

In an upcoming post, I’ll show you how I plan credits now that you can see how easy it is to satisfy two to three subjects using carefully selected resources.

What You Must Know to Teach High School Unit Studies. Click here to grab the tips!

Also, check out Diving into Homeschool Unit Studies: The Dos and Don’ts and 10 Days of Diving Into Unit Studies by Creating a Unit Study Together and Homeschool High School–How to Log Hours for High School.

Hugs and love ya,

5 Simple Ways to Enhance a Homeschool Unit Study

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Unit studies can be intimidating. The same things that make unit studies captivating can be the same things that make them tough to teach. Sharing 5 simple ways to enhance a homeschool unit study, I’m hoping that you won’t be afraid to take the plunge and try a unit study or two.

Unit studies can be intimidating. The same things that make unit studies captivating can be the same things that make them tough to teach. Sharing 5 simple ways to enhance a homeschool unit study, I'm hoping that you won't be afraid to take the plunge and try a unit study or two.

Do You Struggle with Homeschool Unit Studies?

One/ Always include a simple hands-on activity or two.

I use to be very judgmental and critical of homeschoolers (I know, doesn’t sound like me at all does it) who did a lot of hands-on activities until I started actually teaching.

What I learned along the way was that activities don’t have to be expensive or time-consuming to have a wow factor.

What is more important is that hands-on learning brings your topic alive and those are the teaching points your kids remember for life.

I’ve tried to do simple things through my many years of homeschooling.

Two/  Include living books.

Sometimes you can pull information from a textbook.

I’ve done it several times because that is what I had on hand and there was no need to purchase something else.

Look at how I did that at From Textbook to Homeschool Unit Study Starter.

However, if you’re wanting the best ways to enhance a unit study, living books beat the boring blahs when it comes to introducing or learning a unit study.

We love using the books by Beautiful Feet, but we also love using reference books.

Though some can be dry, we find they still have a story like appeal which is the hallmark of living books.

Look at my tips at my post Day 3. Selecting Superior Sub-Topics. 10 Days of Diving Into Unit Studies By Creating A Unit Study Together.

Are Your Unit Studies Boring Your Kids to Sleep?

Three/ Use movies as part of your unit study or as a kick starter.

Many times, I’ve used a documentary, musical, or movie to kick off a unit study. It adds flavor to a time period especially if it’s a history related topic.

Not all kids have good imaginations for a past time period. A movie has a way of adding facts about a time period without a child having to slave over period details.

Look at my post Homeschool History Teaching Ancient Civilizations Using Netflix.

Four/ Include just one or two other homeschool families.

You don’t have to join a co-op if you want to cover topics specifically geared toward your kids.

By homeschooling with another family, you still add the element of fun that is found in a co-op, share the lesson planning with another homeschool mom but still control what you want to teach.

Plus, it was great to see my kids interact with another homeschool educator. We did a study about the Vikings with another family and between the two of us, we had so many ideas for our kids.

Some of our best times were by including another homeschool family or two.

Five/ One of the best ways is to focus on one subtopic within your unit study or enhance it with a focused subtopic.

A huge mistake in unit studies is covering way too much material.

But too another point is not being able to hone in one of the subtopics in a unit study.

Whether you purchase a unit study or find one that is free, a problem has always been that you’re not able to cover a subtopic deeply within a theme which interests your kids.

Today, I’m over the top excited to announce a new series which will be in my shop and that is Unit Study Enhancers.

What exactly are they? Well they are printables (minibooks and/or notebooking pages) to use for those times when you can’t find a unit study which hones in specifically on a subtopic that you want to cover.

My unit study enhancers will enhance your teaching points.

It’s meant to bring up close a subtopic or topic that you want to highlight within a theme.

Add them to a notebook, lapbook, use with a workbook or include them as a subtopic in a free or purchased unit study because the printables are not a complete unit study, but enhance one.

Too, by giving you options within the product download, they are designed to relieve teacher prep time and to use with multiple ages of children. For instance, some downloads have simple researched printed material to glue onto pages. This allows you to move forward teaching when your time is limited.

Or, you can have your student research his own information and write it in. Where possible, I give one link or more for reference while using the printables.

Unless a topic is specifically geared toward young learners, quality photos and not babyish images are chosen so that older learners can be engaged.

Color and the highest quality graphics I can find are used to diminish the blah of boring printables.

My first Unit Study Enhancer focuses on one of my biggest free unit studies here on my blog and that is The Amazon Rain Forest. The Unit Study Enhancer is about the temperate rain forest. You can read more about it here at my shop.

But you can download it today for only $2.25.

Also, look at my tips at my series 10 Days of Diving Into Unit Studies by Creating a Unit Study Together.

Hugs and love ya,

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Foolproof Tips To Homeschool Friends Co-oping (And Staying Friends)

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Foolproof Tips to Homeschool Friends Co-oping (And Staying Friends). You want to stay friends when you decide to teach your kids together. Check out these tried and true tips @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

I love getting your questions and this next question is a very common one because if we have a close friend, we have all thought about it at one time or another. Look at this question I recently got. I have been taking inspiration from your blog for years in my own homeschool journey and wondered if you could help me now with some advice. We would like to combine schooling our kids to see if it will benefit them. Do you have any suggestions of how the mother and I could teach subjects together? Look at these foolproof tips for getting along when you homeschool co-op with a friend and how to stay friends afterwards.

One/Communication.

I cannot stress communication enough beforehand.

Try to resist the knee jerk reaction to decide one week to co-op together and jump into starting the next week.

It’s easier to address potential pitfalls when you’re not in the heat of the moment when it comes to a disagreement. Try to avoid them by communicating well ahead of time. There are so many topics to discuss and it’s best done when everybody is still excited about the meet up.

For example, how will you handle interruptions?

Do you expect the kids to raise their hands? I know this because it happened to me.

When teaching with another mom, I had a more relaxed way of wanting my kids to address their questions while discussing a topic and didn’t want hand raising when I was teaching. I didn’t have 32 kids so I wanted a natural conversation.

However, my friend thought they should raise their hands. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a control freak and certainly wouldn’t let the interruptions get out of hand, but my friend didn’t know that. In other words, I wanted to bring my style of teaching to the co-op.

Another big issue to address is how to handle acting up by a child. I’m not just talking about young kids, but middle and high school kids have mood swings and believe me they can be way more stressing than a 5 year old.

So if you’re teaching with a friend who has kids similar to your children’s age this could be a good thing because she is experienced.

However, too that can make for some preconceived ideas.

Homeschool Comes and Goes, but Lifelong Friends Don’t

For example, with my kids I’ve always expected obedience regardless of their age. I always allowed room for hormones and mood swings because I want allowances for me when I feel bad. Balance is what I strive for and I won’t embarrass my kids or take away their dignity in public even if they deserve it. It just has not been a good parenting skill that ever worked.

So how is a perceived snippy remark going to be handled? For us, we decided that the parent of the child should address their child instead of the one teaching the group calling down the child. This is why it’s so important to decide carefully ahead of time whether you want to co-op with your friend.

As you can see I use the word perceived because a mom who is inexperienced with an older child may have a hard time finding the balance between hormones and flat out disrespect.

I know that two of my best friends Kelly and Cynthia had teens similar to my boys’ ages and would not be offended by some snippy remark. They have big shoulders and can graciously overlook it as I take my son aside and speak to whoever happens to be the offender at the time. I treat their kids with the same respect.

This doesn’t mean anything ugly will happen, it just means you want to be prepared for the ugly side of your child if it comes out.

In a way when you decide to co-op together it’s like co-parenting. You have to set some ground rules and then trust each other when something happens you haven’t discussed.

Two/ Grade level expectations.

Another thing that could negatively affect your fun is when you have two or more kids who are in the same grade level, but it seems like one child is ahead or behind in a subject. Ouch. That can be a sensitive situation to be in.

First, try to remember something very important so that you are not overly critical or judge harshly another homeschool family.

Remember that just because your child has mastered one concept you believe is grade level doesn’t mean he has mastered all of them. Each family approaches subjects differently and focuses on content that is important to their family.

For example, when my boys were young they were less informed about public school grade level geography and history, which most of the time is American geography and history.  I didn’t focus first on American geography and history; I focused first on ancient civilization.

When we met with another family, my kids were more informed about ancient civilization than the other homeschool family. But the other kids, which had been in public school had a more comprehensive foundation in American geography and history than my kids.

This was something I knew ahead and we had to discuss which subjects and topics we would cover and at what grade level. It took some time but we came up with a plan that would fit both families.

Three/Length of class, topics and curriculum.

Again, don’t assume you and your friend on are on the same page when you begin your co-op. Remember, you are bringing your style of how you teach your children and we have many different teaching styles in homeschool.

And just like when you manage a large homeschool co-op where you need an agenda or format for the day, a small co-op is no different. Communicating expectations avoids hard feelings and the best part is that all the kids make memories and benefit from another teaching style.

I highly suggest you format your day with a schedule so that everybody has the same expectations. I don’t mean plan every minute and hour, but do plan a flow to the day. What to expect each day should be part of your plan.

Our plan or flow was to start by 9:00 a.m. and study together for about an hour. We had a quick break while we set up for a hands-on activity. We did a hands-on project every time we met and we tried to get it done by lunch.

The afternoon was for play time because our co-op was just as much about our kids making friends as it was learning together. Later on, we would have a snack appropriate to our theme made ahead of time. For example, we studied history and our snack was some themed history food.

Believe me when I say time flies. You don’t need as much planned time as you think and we never covered as much as I thought we would. Working with a group, just like public school can slow you down. But you also gain many advantages when one child’s strengths can help another child’s weakness.

I need to talk about that for a minute because you may realize that though children are on the same grade level they vary widely in ability. I didn’t want my friend’s children to think I was cross-examining them so I chose to not teach the skill subjects.

If you are not sure what the skill subjects are versus content subjects look at my post Skill Subjects vs. Content Subjects: What’s the Difference?

Also, we decided that any type of writing where we wanted our kids to read aloud what they wrote was to be done privately and on our own time. Then the next school day when we met together we opened our lesson by having each child share their writing.

I preferred to work with my sons on skill subjects like the 3 Rs on our own time. I wanted our time to meet together to be about enrichment.

You have to decide if this will be a homeschool co-op or are you meeting to tutor your friend’s kids?

Unintentionally, a homeschool co-op can turn out where you’re tutoring another homeschool mom’s child.

That is okay, if you agree to exchange your skill set for her kids and she does the same for your kids.

But again, this goes back to the whole foundation for you getting together. Just be sure your purpose is clear.

How to Combine Collective Co-op Strengths and Not Highlight Slip-ups

4/ My tried and true teaching tips.

I have done a co-op with a friend and managed a really large co-op.  My tip is be clear what your expectations are. I didn’t need another mom tutoring my children. If I needed help as a teacher, I could ask another homeschool mom.

My purpose was absolutely clear that I was meeting for enrichment, socialization and for my kids to be sharpened by another homeschool mom’s style of teaching.

I knew I wanted a clearly defined scheduled in case the kids get bored and I knew I wanted to cover fun subjects like art, geography, history, cooking, photography, literature unit study or any other kind of unit study, crafts or any enriching subject.

I wanted a beginning and end to each class and to the time the co-op lasted. This was just in case it wasn’t a good fit for my family. If I agreed to 6 weeks, I did 6 weeks and then evaluated if it worked for us and I didn’t have to give any explanation if we decided to not do it again. We stayed friends.

Also, I wasn’t going to a co-op for another mom to teach my kids Latin, sight words or algebra. By the way, been there done that and it wasn’t that fun.

The skill subjects were ones I wanted to teach at home so I could be sure my kids were grasping important concepts.

This doesn’t mean though that you can’t incorporate skill subjects into your study. We studied the Vikings and added in a hands-on math project by learning how to measure a boat. This is something all the grades could do while not focused on one child’s weakness in a skill subject.

It’s just the way I roll.

Again, you may have another idea for how to run your co-op but I’ve learned that skill subjects can pit friends against friends when one family is ahead in one area and the other family is not.

Subjects that multiple ages can do together work best to keep homeschooling friends true friends long past the formal homeschooling years.

I hope these few tips help you as I could write a book on this subject but will stop with just this post.

Have you encountered any similar problems and what worked for you?

Also, grab some more tips from Homeschool Co-op: The 5 BIG Questions You Need to Ask (before you join), 10 Homeschool Co-op Subjects That Are Better Learned With a Group and Homeschool Co-ops Turned Private Schools.

Hugs and love ya,

Signature T

Don’t forget to follow BOTH of my Pinterest accounts for AWESOME pins.

Visit Tina Robertson’s profile on Pinterest.


Visit Tinas Dynamic Homeschool ‘s profile on Pinterest.

5 Best Resources to Start a Homeschool Unit Study in a Few Hours

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Want to start a homeschool unit study within just a few hours? Grab these 5 Best Resources to Start a Homeschool Unit Study @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool PlusThe secret to starting a homeschool unit study in a few hours is to narrow your focus by using resources that jump start your ideas. Living in an information age, we are inundated with more and more resources. However, we need resources to help us round out our ideas. Today, I thought I would pull back the curtains to share my go to resources when I need to start a homeschool unit study in a few hours.

Let me back up first and explain why I say that you need more resources to draw your ideas up from than actual unit studies.

When I started doing unit studies, I didn’t know I was making unit studies harder than they needed to be by doing them backwards. In other words, I took ready made unit studies and tried to make them fit my children’s needs.

Sometimes they worked and sometimes they didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, if I can use free homeschool unit studies, I’m all for it. I don’t think unit studies should always cost.

Today, it’s not finding resources that can be difficult because there is an overwhelming amount of free things and paid for curriculum that our kids have access to.

Again, it’s narrowing our focus and finding the spark that will motivate our children’s mind that makes our unit study successful.

Useful and practical resources in our expertise field of homeschool has been my solution.

5 of My Go to Homeschool Unit Study Resources

Look at these 5 go to resources that help me to move away from countless hours of research to a reward.

I’m a co-author of The Big Book of School Ideas. One reason I supported this collaboration when writing this first book is that energy emerges from mutual cooperation. Let’s face it. Homeschooling is hard and because we teach in a very unique environment, we need to tap into collective strengths.

There has never been two books like the ones below. What better way to get an idea for a homeschool unit study than to tap 55 brilliant minds? Fifty five homeschool moms joined together to create both volumes of this book.

The book goes beyond the basics of academics and delve into delightful methods like active learning, learning with video games, using LEGO bricks for learning, teaching on the road, learning with movies, and gardening.
The Big Book of Homeschool Ideas vol 1However, we just didn’t stop with one book. There is a Book Two, where 38 homeschool moms share more of their expertise on varying homeschool topics.

Not only can I quickly grab an idea or two about a topic I may want to study about, but these two AWESOME books are quick guides on some of the best curriculum, how to teach difficult children and how to teach older kids.

The books are a one stop shop and must-have resources that I go to when I need a unit study idea or tip on how to teach a difficult subject.

The next resource that has stuck with me is my much loved geography curriculum. You know my love for unit studies which include geography and history.

And North Star Geography is my go to resource for geography ideas because it didn’t do away with hands-on ideas at the middle and high school level. Keeping the digital download on my desk, I can quickly open it at any time if I need inspiration.

Too, one tip to help you teach geography is to remember that it’s easier to use a resource for older kids when teaching younger kids. Tweaking a resource that is designed for younger children, on the other hand, is not easy to adjust for an older child. That is why I’ve always used a middle or high school grade level curriculum.

And that is why I use North Star Geography because it is for a middle and high school kid.

Did I mention the fact that Wonder Maps is absolutely the best way to study different time periods?

Geography BundleI have used a lot of history programs through the years and am passionate about many of them.

But, this is about using a resource that allows me to quickly start a homeschool.

The one that I turn to when I need a framework of history is What Every Child Needs to Know about Western Civilization because it teaches history in just 14 lessons.

From that framework I can decide which area of history my topic falls into and then I can find ideas quickly.

Read Why I Love and Use BrimWood Press History Here

Then my last go to resource is one that keeps me current with homeschooling and gives another well to draw up ideas from. It’s one of my very favorite homeschooling magazines.

Home School Enrichment is just that. Not only does it give me helpful tips while homeschooling but I pore over the pages as I get ideas about unit study topics that are current for today.

I love the fact that they give my followers a 38% discount. That just TICKLES me and I’m SO proud to partner with them. I get to use something I love and share it with you too.

Through the years, I’ve spent more money sometimes then I care to admit to when I try to find inspiration through curriculum. But when I spend it on right things I can actually get several years worth of use out of them.

I hope you’ll love these resources as much as I have because each one I can turn to and in minutes be on my way to starting my unit study. Each one gives me a starting point for the different subjects.

What do you like to use?

Also, look at these other posts for helpful and detailed how-tos.

3 Things To Remember When Homeschool Unit Studies Get Complicated, Beginner to Advanced: 9 Steps to a Unique Unit Study – Step by Step Example of How to Begin an Easy Unit Study on the American Civil War and From Textbook to Homeschool Unit Study Starter.

Hugs and love ya,

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