Day 6. Unit Study Resources that Stir the Imagination. 10 Days of Diving Into Unit Studies by Creating a Unit Study Together.

You don’t have to be creative to create a unit study that sparks your children’s interests, you just have to be committed.  Like all things that are practiced, the more you design a unit study, the better you become at it.  Gathering resources plays a large part in whether your unit study is successful or just so so.

Gathering resources, for me anyway, is a constant factor in my journey.  All teachers plan differently, but I prefer to plan as I go along.  For me, it keeps planning time to a minimal because I already have some basic resources to choose from.

I guess you can call the resources I gather my unit study starters.

You notice how I will change directions on you when we are studying one topic and post my resources that I gather up for another one.  I just did it this week with the few resources I shared about a human body unit study.  My secret to planning is to gather as I go and to plan one or many unit studies while I am doing another one.  It really keeps the planning part from being overwhelming when you can spread it out over a period of time.

Unit Study Resources that Stir the Imagination.

Gathering resources is just one aspect.  Also, knowing which resources will help to create the love of hands-on learning and knowing which ones to ditch will keep your unit study moving along and not stagnant.

Look at my list of things that I got to on a regular basis for my unit study starters.

Choosing resources wisely that will capture your children’s interest is not the only caveat to be aware of.

Hands-on or Drooping Hands

While I do whole heartedly agree with the fact that hands-on learning is an inherent part of any well educated child, I do believe that an overload of them or complicated ones can exhaust both teacher and child.

As new unit study converts, sometimes they tend to go overboard with hands-on learning.

Hands-on projects are like seasonings that we add to our food.  Just a pinch of it enhances our food.  Hands-on projects should not be overwhelming or exhausting.

Planning too many or did other things that made them hard to fit into your day can make unit studies turn to blah quickly.

Do you make these 4 mistakes?

Look at some of these tips for adding hands-on resources that will not exhaust you or your kids.

• Avoid insanity by doing one project per child or grade level.  Do one project for ALL of your children.  Aim for a project that satisfies the middle age range of your children.
• Avoid complicated projects.  Choose projects that require normal household items you already have on hand.  It is okay to gather supplies you don’t have on hand too, but try to plan ones where you have a majority of supplies on hand.
• Avoid long term projects.  If you have very little kids {mostly under 8 or 9 years old} choose projects that have an immediate wow factor, i.e. blow up something.  You won’t hook them on hands-on learning if they have to always grow something that takes weeks or months to build.  As they grow older, they develop the love of waiting, watching and observing and then you can choose longer projects.
• Avoid doing all the work.   If you have older kids, let them gather the supplies, decide some of the projects and lead the projects.  Even when kids are young, they can learn by gathering up items on your list.

Unit Study Online Resources Organized

Key to using your resources is being able to find them after you have gathered them up.

An easy system and one that you can retrieve quickly always works best.  And though I love Pinterest, the Pinterest boards are not really able to be highly organized at this time.  Pinterest really needs sub-boards.

My top way of organizing online resources is Evernote.  Evernote is free and I find it way more practical than bookmarks because I am able to copy/paste just about anything onto it.  I organize it and type whatever I need to remember.

I have it on my browser bar so I quickly access it when I need to add a link, picture, or idea.

If I didn’t blog, Evernote would be the only tool I would need to gather up links, thoughts, pictures, videos and organized them in notebooks.  Notebooks are like files on Evernote.  It is truly a masterpiece way to organize your unit study resources.

Ocean Unit Study Resources Gathered

Here are a few of the resources that I have for the Ocean Unit Study.

Though there are volumes of links, I find that by grabbing just a few of the ones that better suit us or the ages of my children keeps me from storing links that we will not use.

Gathering resources is a practiced art no less important than teaching the unit study.  Be selective and choose ones that you think will inspire your unit study.

Do you find it hard to organize your resources or find them for your unit study?

Hugs and love ya,

10 Days of Creating A Unit Study Together