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

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.

Table of Contents

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
Hands- On Book Report. Did you see the post about a book report mobile hanger?	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}	Make secret codes and decipher them. Make your own board game for math.
Add grammar study points on a “O” ring and laminate. Anything on an “O” ring makes it hands on instead of worksheets and you have that tool for a longer time to use with younger children.	Make your own groups of ten counters by using popsicles and gluing beans or any other favorite object on it. Skip count by actually skipping and counting.
Add bird seed, rice, or beans to a plastic bottle and make I Spy words.	Snowflake symmetry. Design your own tiling patterns.
Write backwards like Leonardo Da Vinci. {Mirror writing.} Find a penpal. Start a cookbook.	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.	Math card games to teach fractions. Kitchen geometry.

History/Geography	Science
Make a compass. Cook recipes from a place in the world. The Around the World Cookbook: Over 350 Authentic Recipes from the World’s Best-Loved Cuisines	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.	Solar System Stickers (Dover Little Activity Books Stickers) Take care of a small pet.
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.
Make your own board game for your topic.	Illustrate an invention. Raise a tadpole, have a butterfly garden Insect Lore Live Butterfly Garden
Make a paper mache globe.	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,