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unit studies

Day 7. Unit Study Activity Ideas. 10 Days of Diving Into Unit Studies by Creating a Unit Study Together.

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

The hands-on activities that I listed in Day 6. Unit Study Resources that Stir the Imagination. 10 Days of Diving Into Unit Studies by Creating a Unit Study Together  which are for our upcoming Ocean Unit Study may not fit your particular theme.  So today, I want to stretch and expand your knowledge of what other unit study activities and ideas you could use to enhance the topic that you have chosen.

One of the biggest fears about planning unit studies is that activity ideas may run slim to none (not ever the case, but it feels like it anyway) for your topic.  So having your quiver full of ideas avoids stuck-itis when it is time to plan your unit study.

Day 7. Unit Study Activity Ideas. 10 Days of Diving Into Unit Studies by Creating a Unit Study Together

Also though depending on what subjects you want to emphasize in your unit study, the ideas here will give you options to choose from for each subject.

Unit Study Activity Ideas

In other words, I have organized ideas by subjects and have added activities for a variety of ages/grades.  You can decide which activities works best for your children’s abilities regardless of age.

One last thing about the activities listed below and that is I have tried to keep the ideas as general as possible to use with any topic.  But some ideas don’t make sense, unless I give you an example of how to use them.  To make the ideas more clear, I give you specifics in how to connect that idea to an actual activity.

Let’s get started.

Language Arts

Math

  • Build a model bridge.  Make your own abacus. Play Uno.  Start a business for a child entrepreneur who sees no need for math.
  • Make you own themed paper to illustrate/write. Decorate with stickers or draw an art border.
  • Build place value models.  Create visual number lines. Create calendars with number and values.
  • Do a skit based on any piece of literature. {Shakespeare}
  • Add bird seed, rice, or beans to a plastic bottle and make I Spy words.
  • Snowflake symmetry.  Design your own tiling patterns.
  • Make an addition wheel, make a paper die to practice use of any of the basic 4 operations.  Create your own problems on the paper die.
  • Puppet Show.  Create a timeline for events in a book.  Round up famous speeches and study them.
  • Draw and cut out templates to show Pythagorean theorem by making them puzzle pieces.
  • Journal with art or journal by pictures only.  Do Mad Libs for grammar.
  • Play store. Create a math dictionary. (We did this one year and it is a great reference tool all year round.)
  • Create a list of proverbs.  Add to it each day.  Do a noun hunt, verb hunt,etc.  Do word dominoes.

 
Unit Study Activity Ideas

History/Geography

Science

  • Draw/Label a cell.  Build a website. There are plenty of easy free website templates for new programmers.
  • Make passports.  Create a treasure map for geography.
  • Create a timeline on just one event instead of a whole time period.
  • Do a report about a scientist (language arts & science).  Make charts & graphs instead of worksheets.  Do a YouTube video.
  • Create an ocean in a bottle.  Instead of starting a garden, grow one vegetable.
  • Make a ship from milk cartons, or ice cream, or soda bottles.
  • Community service like a garden or visit a habitat.  Do recycling projects.
  • Interview an older person who witnessed a historical event or have him tell about his life.
  • Study an ant hill. Buy a kit for this unless you have a backyard full of them lol. Insect Lore Ant Hill

I didn’t list art or music because those subjects are a bit easier to find activities to do because by their very nature they are hands-on.  I wanted to stick to subjects that took a bit more finesse on your part as a teacher to bring learning alive.

Also, don’t forget to memorize lists or things like continents and oceans, Bible verses, helping verbs, skip counting, quotes for history, science songs, months of the year, days of the week, presidents, 10 plagues on Egypt, the 12 Knights of the Round Table,  50 states, the wives of King Henry VIII (we remembered like this divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived), 12 apostles, the planets, types of clouds and colors of the rainbow as examples.

Collect items like rocks, postage stamps from different countries, arrowheads and coins.  Check out this Squidoo Lens of items to collect.

Though certainly not complete, I do hope this expansive general list of ideas will help you to see how each subject can be brought to life through a number of activities.

But now that we have ALL of this information that we have been gathering, it is time to stream line this baby and create actual lesson plans we can use each day.

Next post, I will show you how to take the information I have given you and create a set of lesson plans!

What do you think? Are you starting to feel more confident about diving into a unit study?  If you have created one before, what advice do you have to add to this list?

Hugs and love ya,

10 Days of Creating A Unit Study Together

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

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


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.

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

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.

  • board games
  • apps
  • living books
  • atlases
  • bar charts
  • teacher’s guides
  • student magazines
  • homeschool magazines
  • currclick
  • netflix
  • my pinterest boards

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.

FBI Unit Study Create A Crystal Radio Together
  • 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.

Easy to find Evernote

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.

Ocean Lapbook Cover Option 1 @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus
Yum. Edible Ocean Layers @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus
Ocean Vocabulary Words and Wave Pocket @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus
Message in a Bottle Language Arts Activity @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus
Ocean Lapbook @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus
How Low Can You Go Ocean Lapbook Starter @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus
Ocean Currents Minibook @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus
What is the Ocean Minibook @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus
Ocean Currents and The Galapagos1
Winter Homeschooling - Look to the Sea. 17 Hands-On Activities for Two to Teens @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus featured
Edible Geography Sea Levels
5 Days of Look Alive Winter Homeschooling. Day 1 Look to the Sea. @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus featured

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

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Day 5. Creating Unit Study Objectives. 10 Days of Diving Into Unit Studies by Creating a Unit Study Together.

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

Head on I want us to tackle another myth or challenge about creating unit studies which is that they are hard to grade and even harder to satisfy educational standards.  That doesn’t have to be the case with unit studies.  But like any creative teaching tool, you need to put measured steps in place.

Unit Study Day 5. Creating Unit Study Objectives. 10 Days of Diving Into Unit Studies by Creating a Unit Study Together.

Satisfying the educationalese of a state or country if you live in one that requires stricter record keeping is important.  Even if you don’t live in a state or country that requires strict planning like I do, it is very important to decide what you want to extract from any unit study.  A unit study is only beneficial if it serves your goals or objectives.

If you want to include goals or objectives, then you will want to do them at this point in your planning.

Exploring Unit Study Goals & Objectives

Goals and objectives are technically or educationally speaking two very different things.  I won’t bombard you with too many educationalese, but it helps to understand a bit about them so you can chart progress.

Objectives are tiny measured steps.  It is hard to boil down about what objectives are to a few sentences, but at the same time I don’t want you to think there isn’t a simple explanation either.

Objectives in the educational world are precise, measurable and specific steps or what you want your children to learn.  Taking this one step further you want a clear objective because lesson plans are based on an objective.   The lesson plan is the explanation of how you are going to accomplish that very specific outcome you described in the objective.

Make sense?

On the other hand, a goal is just a broad sweeping statement about what you are going to study.  It is not about how you are going to do it.  A goal is like a mission statement.

Having a non-public school teacher background helps me to appreciate that I can either set objectives first or like I did with you here, choose the sub-topics first and then create objectives.  The second option may seem probably weird, crazy and far-fetched for a public school teacher who plans normally the other way around.  In other words, standards are in place first.  So they would plan a course description or goal and then jot down specific, measurable objectives to reach those standards.

I don’t want to cloud the difference for you.  We have freedom as home educators when it comes to preparing objectives or goals of a unit study.  We can choose child-led learning by focusing on unit study topics and sub-topics and not objectives.  Then, write our goal and objectives.  This is perfectly sane, unique, and creative because you are putting the needs and interest of your family ahead of meeting standards.  If however, you want to write standards for each grade and plan the other way like a public school teacher, it is fine too.

Overall, the nifty tip to being a technical teacher when you have to be and you don’t have a public school teacher background is knowing that a transition into creating objectives can be done by choosing sub-topics first.

Look at my goals and objectives on the Ocean Unit Study that I started below.  I divided my objectives into 2 general grade levels.

My Goal for the Ocean Unit Study

“To provide a learning experience showing the importance of oceans to all life on our planet.”

That’s it! Easy.  I could stop there because it is simple enough.  But, I also want to add in “To marvel at the vastness of the ocean and the creation in it.”  In other words, I want to remember that one of my goals is to build in my sons an appreciation for creation too.

Extracting Unit Study Objectives

Now, look at some of these objectives I came up with.  Remember, the key to creating your objectives is to be very specific and describe what your child is expected to do by the end of the unit.

Lower/Elementary level

  • Students will know the approximate size of the ocean.
  • Identify the oceans of the world.
  • Students will identify some animal and plant life that lives in the ocean.
  • Compare and contrast the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
  • Tell what coral is.

Middle/High School level

  • ·Using hands-on ideas students will identify how water moves around the world.
  • Build a model showing the tidal zones.
  • Identify the composition of seawater, currents, tides, waves, and marine life.
  • Analyze ways to protect our ocean resources.

This is certainly not all I would want to add, but I wanted you to get a running start in how you could create objectives and be technical if you ever needed to be.

Unit Study Goals and Objectives Sample

{Note: If you have purchased my unit study planner, I have a comprehensive set of goal/objective pages that I will be sending to you shortly IF you emailed me after you purchased my planner to let me know that you wanted updates.}

I hope I didn’t lose you in all this.  My mind goes to  details of planning and I just wanted to arm you with some technical background in case you have been timid to take the leap into unit studies.

Also, I have created an easy planning page for you when you need it.

Download here Unit Study Goals & Objectives.

Understanding that you can have both goals and objectives while you savor the engaging interactive part of unit studies helps the teacher mom in all of us.

Are you going to create objectives with your unit study? I think we are just about ready to start pulling resources together now.

Hugs and love ya,

10 Days of Creating A Unit Study Together

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Day 4. Finalize Sub-topics. 10 Days of Diving Into Unit Studies by Creating a Unit Study Together.

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

Curb a potential time waster like determining sub-topics by using the chapters found in a topical book on the theme you have selected.  It’s quite the nifty tip because a lot of the ground work on a topic has been laid for you.  It keeps the part that can be overwhelming, which is planning a unit study, to manageable.

Unit Study. Day 4. Finalize Sub-Topics. 10 Days of Diving Into Unit Studies by Creating a Unit Study Together.

Unit Study Planning

Of course you determine if you want to cover those chapters as sub-topics or not.  Mix and match those chapters turned sub-topics with other books, articles or magazines you have on hand on the subject too.

Because the process of lesson planning can be simplified, below I show you how I created my draft planning page from just one book, Discover the Ocean, which I talked about on Day 3. Selecting Superior Sub-Topics. 10 Days of Diving Into Unit Studies By Creating A Unit Study Together.

I wanted to use one book to give you the basics of planning.  After you plan a couple of unit studies, you will come up with your own sub-topics and like I mentioned add others from other resources you have too.

Unit Study Planning. Ocean Unit Study Planning Page

        {part of the form from my unit study planner}

Also, when it came to the literature column, I just dotted down what we have in the house already which fits nicely with this topic.  Then, I researched the scriptures to find ones that applied to my topic of Ocean as well.  And, you can take the Bible study one step further by adding facts about the parting of the Red Sea.

Another reason I picked out this book to use as an example with you is because it has a glossary section in the back too.  Right there I have my spelling and vocabulary section built in and to choose from for my unit study.  I just wanted to show you that if you pick out a resource that is extremely helpful, it can making preparing unit studies a cinch.  As you gain more experience and become a pro planner, it becomes easier to piecemeal a unit study from several different resources.

After choosing the sub-topics, then assign those sub-topics as subjects.  Now, you can glance at your unit study as a whole to see if your unit study will be lop-sided or if it looks like you have a nice balance of subjects being learned throughout the topic.  Remember, it doesn’t matter if it’s lop-sided because that may be your focus.  This unit study on the ocean is a bit more lop-sided intentionally because I needed it to be more science focused.

As you can see from the above example, I can still create another column for art if I choose to at anytime.  My primary focus for that column right now is to use the misc. ideas to focus on some vocabulary that I know Tiny needs.  That is the flexibility of creating your own unique unit study because it can be slanted whichever direction your family needs or wants to go.

Remember this is my big overview and certainly I do not have to stop here with planning and wouldn’t want to.  I can still add some art and keep on with sub-topics.  Having more sub-topics is another key to keeping your unit study moving along.  Sometimes we will take a sub-topic a day and for other unit studies, we may take weeks.

Ease of Unit Study Planning

Flesh out your unit study with sub-topics generously because you may either move ahead faster or find some you don’t like as well.  You will have plenty to choose from if that becomes the case.

At this point too, I also look at other resources I may need.  I listed some here for you below that make studying about the ocean fun.  The way I decide if I want to buy something versus borrowing from the library is if I know I will use that resource for many years like with multiple children or if it’s a resource with facts that can be studied over and over again throughout the years even with one child.

You have just created a course of study with relatively little ease as well.

I got so excited to show you all of this information floating around in my head that I got ahead of myself.  We are not quite ready for the stage of pulling resources together.  I have one more post to show you about planning before we start pulling more resources.

Pulling resources is still kind of like planning too, but I wanted to show you how you can satisfy the educationalese of a state or country if you live in one that requires stricter record keeping.  If you don’t live in a place like that, then who knows you may astound folks with your teaching prowess after I show you the next post on this series which contains a few educationalese.

Did I lose you?  Are you with me?  Have you grouped your sub-topics together for the theme you chose?  If you are using my unit study planner, then just pencil them in.  If not, create your sub-topics some way that you remember them.

Are you having any problems creating any of the subject sub-topics from the resource you chose?

Hugs and love ya,

10 Days of Creating A Unit Study Together

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

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

Day 3. Selecting Superior Sub-Topics. Unit Study

Affiliate Link ElementsSlice and dice of your unit study begins with being picky about sub-topics.  One significant reason that could dampen a unit study is not selectively choosing sub-topics.  Chiseling that main topic down into manageable planning sub-topics is the key to not covering “everything” and not being overwhelmed.  Not only did I choose the topic of Oceans to do with you because it has a kazillion topics so I can illustrate a slice and dice method, but I also wanted to pull you in closer on the specific how tos of choosing a sub-topic.

Trim and Fit Unit Studies

From the beginning, it is important to brainstorm sub-topics that would fit naturally into your main theme.  In other words never force a fit to make something fit into a subject for the sake of saying you covered something in that subject.  It really makes for some awkward learning moments.  I have done it and afterwards I felt like I was having an insane homeschooling day.

For example, I mentioned in Day 2. Tips For Choosing Unit Study Topics. 10 Days of Diving Into Unit Studies By Creating A Unit Study Together I chose Oceans not just because it will be part of our big move coming up, but because it is a science topic.  I want our sub-topics to stay focused more on science.  So if I was to try to tie in history by asking the boys how do they think the Oregon Trail pioneers felt when they arrived in Oregon and viewed the Pacific Ocean would feel awkward to me.  On the other hand if I tied in the history of seafaring to our unit study, that would feel more natural.

Make sense?

Books and Guides Matter

Next, the very basic essential to planning an excellent unit study is having a hardworking spine which can be a study guide, teacher’s manual, textbook, pamphlet, living book or article on line.  Start by looking over what you already have in your home library to choose as a guide.  If you don’t have one, then make a visit to the library to find one or buy one if you think you will do this topic again and can use it with multiple children.

Though I love living books, I normally use them to include as our literature to read.  Sometimes I choose a living book, but a lot of times I do not.  Why? Because books that give me ideas for hands-on too from the very beginning sets me up for success by making the unit study easier.  I want to work less in teacher prep so I chose books filled with facts AND that have hands-on ideas for projects.  It really depends on what type of unit study also.  For example, if we were doing one a famous person then a living book would be my number one go to book.

Also if you have younger children, then choosing a living book like the ones by Holling C. Holling like I have listed below are great story readers and make a useful teacher spine.  It is easy too at times to find hands on ideas for younger learners, but not quite as easy for older students.

So as the teacher you decide what type of books keeps it easy for you and for the ages of the children you have.  No need to dread hands-on because that is the life of a great unit study.  Just be more picky about choosing the unit study guide.  Instead of going with a living book for my Ocean Unit Study, then I am going with more of a fact book which already has ideas for hands-on projects.

I have mentioned these books before and now I gathered some of them up for you to see.  Because hands on ideas are already included, they make WONDERFUL unit study starters.

Discover the Oceans is the one I will be using for this unit study from my favorite books above.   This doesn’t mean I can’t add another spine.  I had this one at home and it is a good jumping off point.  Look below at the chapters inside the book.

how to use a chapter book to prep unit study

I don’t have to fuss much because I already have a guide or direction to go with on this topic.   Quickly glancing at the chapters I can tell which ones are the direction we need to go and which ones I may need to look over.  The “maybe” chapters are ones I need to look at because I want to keep this a more science topic and I want to be sure they don’t pull us too far off that track.

Unit Study Course of Study | Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

(page from my Unit Study Planner)

Choose sub-topics that pique your children’s interests and then assign them to subjects.  I will be doing this in the next post where I will have chosen all my sub-topics for the Ocean, but I have an example above from my FBI unit study to show you now.  I have 3 sub-topics shown.  Two that interested my boys which are J. Edgar Hoover and the effects of WWI and one I added, which is the U.S. Government.   So I added something I felt like they needed to study about and grouped with the sub-topics that they naturally picked.   On the right side I used a check to show which subject areas I felt those sub-topics met.

So up to this point, you  need to

  • Pick a guide or two;
  • Look over the chapters;
  • Determine which chapters will help you in your topic and which ones will not or would the book serve better as a reader or literature.
  • Choose your sub-topics

Next post I will share my sub-topics on the Ocean Unit Study and then show you how to start pulling resources together.

Are you with me still?

Hugs and love ya,

10 Days of Creating A Unit Study Together

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Day-3.-Selecting-Superior-Sub-Topics.-10-Days-of-Diving-Into-Unit-Studies-by-Creating-a-Unit-St.png
Day-4.-Finalize-Sub-Topics.-10-Days-of-Diving-Into-Unit-Studies-by-Creating-a-Unit-Study-Togeth.png
Day-5.-Creating-Unit-Study-Objectives.-10-Days-of-Diving-Into-Unit-Studies-by-Creating-a-Unit-S.png
Day-6.-Resources-that-Stir-the-Imagination.-10-Days-of-Diving-Into-Unit-Studies-by-Creating-a-Un.png
Day-7.-Unit-Study-Activity-Ideas.-10-Days-of-Diving-Into-Unit-Studies-by-Creating-a-Unit-Study-T.png
Day-8.-Creating-A-Unit-Study-Lesson-Plan.-10-Days-of-Diving-Into-Unit-Studies-by-Creating-a-Unit.png
Unit-Study-Schedule.png