Posts Tagged ‘unit studies’

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Unit Studies Accommodate All Learning Styles

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2014

unit-studies-learning-styles

Unit Studies are wonderful at accommodating all learning styles. When you tie all your learning together into one theme, you make it come to life for your auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learners. You splash yourself into that topic, grabbing great books and DVD’s about that topic. Let’s say you are studying sharks. You choose books that go in-depth on that topic. Grab a book about sharks and open it. Someone who specializes in sharks wrote this book. If you were reading information about sharks in a textbook, that information was not written by someone who loves and studies sharks; it was written by a person who writes about all topics with generalities.

Learning Styles

In case you are not familiar with learning styles, you will find the three main learning styles below. Auditory learners learn best through their ears, visual learners acquire information through their eyes, and kinesthetic learners understand a topic through hands-on learning. All students master material best through hands-on learning (imagine learning how to drive a car without actually doing it!), but some students prefer to do fewer real-life projects.

1. Auditory Learners

Now read that shark book to your kids. They hear the information from a living book that sounds like it’s coming from a deep sea diver instead of a classroom teacher. DVD’s are also auditory, as the kids can listen to the sloshing sounds of water when a person is in the deep ocean, being circled by shark fins.

2. Visual Learners

The visual learners see all the large, gorgeous shark pictures. Because the pictures are so lovely, your kids are able to identify different kinds of sharks because they are paying attention to the large and gorgeous details. No textbook can possibly have as many gorgeous pictures about sharks as a shark book does. The textbook doesn’t have enough space because it has to cover so many topics in a superficial way that is insipid, boring, and impossible to remember.

3. Kinesthetic Learners

Your kinesthetic or tactile learners love to do hands-on activities. They can go to a city aquarium and see live sharks being fed. The students can watch first hand as the shark’s torpedo-shaped body cuts through the water with alarming speed.

Do you see why unit studies are so brilliant? All of your students can use their best learning style, plus they have a chance to experience the topic.

Come back tomorrow to see why unit studies are superior to textbooks in every topic other than math.

Unit Studies 101

Day 1: What is a Unit Study?
Day 2: Unit Studies Accommodate All Learning Styles (this post)
Day 3: Unit Studies vs. Textbooks
Day 4: Acceleration Through Unit Studies
Day 5: How to Put Together a Unit Study

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Posted in Homeschooling | 12 Comments »

Unit Studies 101

Monday, July 21st, 2014

unit-studies-101

Over the next 5 days, I will be giving you a crash course on unit studies in a series called “Unit Studies 101.” By the end of this series, you will understand why I love unit studies so much, and why my students are so far ahead in their content areas of learning. My kids are able to retain their learning with much greater efficiency, and all while having fun and not being rushed!

Here is a preview of what will be coming up this week:

Unit Studies 101

Day 1: What is a Unit Study? (this post)
Day 2: Unit Studies Accommodate All Learning Styles
Day 3: Unit Studies vs. Textbooks
Day 4: Acceleration Through Unit Studies
Day 5: How to Put Together a Unit Study

What is a Unit Study?

A unit study is an educational approach where you integrate all your subjects into one theme. This is ideal for many homeschool families who teach kids of multiple ages, and they want to focus on one time period or topic in science at a time. For example, if you are learning about Ancient Egypt, you tie your history, literature, art projects, writing assignments, and field trips into that time period. Retention is higher when learning is approached this way, and all learning styles are addressed.

A lot of people think that unit studies are something that people add on to an already overloaded curriculum. But no; this is not the case. It replaces the other curriculum except for math and learning how to read and write. You can choose a spine or backbone to your study of history or science if you want (by using a pre-made curriculum), or you can use books from the library alone.

Unit studies simplify your homeschooling significantly. After the kids do math first thing in the morning, you are only doing one theme for the rest of the morning. You don’t feel rushed to splinter the day into tiny bits that are almost schizophrenic. If you have 4 kids, you don’t have to teach 4 different science books. Instead, you go deeply into one topic until you master it, then move on to another topic. You will cover all your sciences in depth way before the kids in the schools. Simple. Deep. Fun.

Where is the Joy in Your Homeschooling?

If you have no joy in your homeschool, you are probably using a method other than unit studies. Unit studies are the most effective, long-lasting, and fun way to teach any topic. Your kids will laugh and have fun while splashing into the theme of the unit. Brothers and sisters aren’t isolated into the solitary confinement of their rooms to do their work separately while yawning. Instead, the whole family does read-alouds and dramatizations of the themes being studied so that relationships between family members are built.

Come back tomorrow to see how a unit study addresses every learning style for your students.

hopscotchjuly2014

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Posted in Homeschooling | 15 Comments »

Sample Homeschool Schedule

Thursday, September 13th, 2012

sample-homeschool-schedule

Before I type out our homeschool schedule and courses for this school year, I would like to say that if your children are not in high school, there is no reason to do more than one unit study at a time. Do math first thing in the morning; then an in-depth unit study should include (over the course of the year) history, science, literature, reading, writing, and art. Unit studies are the best way to learn, where you splash into one topic and surround yourself with it. All high school and college courses are in-depth unit studies. There is no other way to learn something in a thorough fashion. If you are interested in gardening, and you voraciously read everything you can get your hands on about gardening, you are doing a personal unit study on gardening.

Textbooks are thin rocks skimming upon the surface of a pond, never going deeply enough to give true knowledge that can be remembered for the rest of your life. Textbooks are churning out illiterate children in our public school system (a failing system), and the only reason private schools are successful with textbooks is because the creative teachers make the material into unit studies. I’ve seen it with my own eyes when I was a teacher in the schools, and I’m telling you the truth.

My 10-year-old and 12-year-old have been ready for high school science for years because they have done all the sciences in depth already through unit studies. (My Unit Study Treasure Vault includes our unit studies we’ve done over the years to get to such a high level so young.) My 10-year-old and 12-year-old both read on a college level. I believe their deep knowledge in all subject areas is due to the great unit studies we’ve done.

I don’t feel comfortable sending young teenagers to college to be influenced by ungodly professors at such a formative time in their lives. For this reason I did not start high school biology when my older two kids were 8 and 10, even though they were ready. After praying about it and not wanting to hold them back any longer, I’ve decided to teach high school biology this year, using Apologia Biology.

This year we are doing a Renaissance Unit Study. It’s really a literature unit study, since Shakespeare is the main topic we will be covering. We’ve already watched our first Shakespeare play, and the kids enjoyed it. We will be doing lots of art this year, too.

Bryan (12 years old)

  • Algebra
  • Biology
  • Shakespeare/Renaissance
  • Karate/Swimming

Stephen (10 years old)

  • Pre-Algebra
  • Biology
  • Shakespeare/Renaissance
  • Flag football/Basketball/Swimming

Nathaniel (9 years old)

  • 6th grade math
  • Science kits and unit studies, delight-directed
  • Shakespeare/Renaissance
  • Flag football/Basketball/Swimming

Rachel (7 years old)

  • 3rd grade math
  • Science kits and unit studies, delight-directed
  • Shakespeare/Renaissance
  • Gymnastics/Swimming

SCHEDULE:

  • 7am-8am: Math
  • 8am-9am: Bible/Breakfast/Reading
  • 9am-10am: ~break~
  • 10am-11am: Biology
  • 11am-noon: ~break~
  • Noon-1pm: Shakespeare/Renaissance/Lunch
  • 1pm-2pm: ~silent reading~

My older two sons are reading G.A. Henty historical fiction books during “naptime,” when it is quiet at my house. They are reading through the Renaissance time period. (Last year they read the Henty books set during the medieval time period.) My sons just read a fun book about microscopes during their silent reading time as well, since the first chapter in biology includes becoming familiar with microscopes.

My younger two children read to me right after breakfast. I sometimes throw in a craft for the kids to do around 9am. If any of the kids woke up at 8am instead of 7am, they do their math after breakfast. I sometimes work one-on-one with a child for writing. Otherwise they relax and play. My 3rd son played with snap circuits during part of his free time this week. My daughter had a tea party with her dolls. My oldest son likes to draw during his free time, and my second son loves reading Calvin and Hobbes comic books during his free time, giggling to himself. This is my day in a nutshell.

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Posted in Homeschooling, Organization | 6 Comments »

Unit Studies for Homeschool

Friday, September 7th, 2012

unit-studies-for-homeschoolI’m on the edge of my seat, about to launch the biggest project I’ve ever done, which has grown way beyond what I imagined. It’s the fruition of 20 years’ worth of work, since I’ve been an educator for two decades. It’s a membership site where all my unit studies are in categories, with supporting materials beneath them, usually in the form of video demonstrations. It includes over 100 unit studies for homeschool. There are well over 1,000 supporting videos and articles, showing you how to homeschool your children with unit studies.

I’ve had people e-mailing me, asking for the book list for each of my unit study time periods. It took me many hours to track down all the books that I used, but these lists are now in my Unit Study Treasure Vault, followed by a list of activities in the order I did them while homeschooling my own children.

The science section has subject headings, and all the articles, videos, and field trips I did for each subject are under each heading. And I’ve added more high quality videos from the best of what the internet has to offer. I will be filming three exclusive demonstration videos found nowhere else on earth but in my Treasure Vault each month, plus I will continuously be adding to each category.

There’s a geography section, a literature section, an art section, a field trip section, and I will be adding more sections in the upcoming months. But each section is substantial and large already. That’s the crazy thing about it. And it will only be growing.

The Bible section is one of my favorite sections. Years ago I wrote Charlotte Mason style summaries for each book of the Bible, turning them in to my pastor for a class that took two years. My own father was a pastor and a missionary for 30 years (as well as a seminary professor), and he and my mother are helping me to edit the summaries and upload them to the Bible section of the Treasure Vault. Under each book of the Bible, I will be creating wonderful activities. This one section will eventually have hundreds of original hands-on learning activities. Even though I’m creating all these materials for homeschool moms, Sunday school teachers would also benefit from it. It might become so huge that it will need a whole separate Bible Treasure Vault. Who knows? The whole thing gives me so much joy, I can hardly contain it.

In fact, the whole idea for this Treasure Vault was birthed in joy. My husband had taken the kids swimming one evening, and I sat there in silence in the house, asking God what He wanted me to do with my business. I opened my heart to God and waited. Suddenly the idea for the Unit Study Treasure Vault came to me, and the individual ideas came like a waterfall, hundreds of ideas, and I had so much joy in the Spirit. I am exactly in the center of the will of God right now. In God’s presence is fullness of joy.

My husband is a computer programmer who happens to be my webmaster, so he has been writing computer code all summer long. I’m not kidding. He’s hardly been sleeping at all the last few weeks in preparation for this launch. My husband told me last night, “This is the biggest thing you’ve ever done, and you’re blogging about a hammock. We’re days from launching. I’m surprised you haven’t been getting e-mails saying, ‘What’s going on?’”

“Oh, I’m getting e-mails, and I’m answering each of them one by one. Those women are excited about the Vault and can’t wait.”

We have a couple of small glitches which are being worked out. We might launch tonight. Or Monday. The time is near…

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

The Unit Study Treasure Vault is now open!!

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Posted in Homeschooling | 5 Comments »

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