Let's talk about interspersing unit studies within the school year

[Kidlit]

Has anyone done this? What I'm thinking about doing is taking a break from SOTW 1 and Elemental Science (maybe even --gasp!-- everything!) and rowing a FIAR title. I'm thinking this would give us a nice break. Too, my girls are still so young-I don't want to miss the opportunity to snuggle with them and read good literature. Will this make our history and science studies too disjointed? I'm thinking of making the units last a week.

[prairiegirl]

We have done something similar in past years and will continue it for this year. I do block scheduling for history and science, which means we do history every day for 3 or 4 weeks and then we do a science block for that same amount of time. After a science block, then we do a unit study for a month.

 

Usually we have done units on literature ( I Am Regina, Chasing Vermeer, etc.) that I have made up myself. This year, however, our unit studies will be based on Further Up, Further In, the Chronicles of Narnia.

 

I like following the cycle for history and science and my kids like doing unit studies, so we have been able to mesh the two together in our schedule.

[Kidlit]

Thanks, prairiegirl! I'm assuming that you don't finish your science and history curricula in one year, then. Am I right? Or do you compensate for the lost weeks somehow?

[Holly]

I've been meaning to ask the same question. We have FIAR vol. 1-4 and I've never even used any of the vol. 4 books (even though we have all but one of them). :lol: We switched to HOD this year, but I'd still like to "row" an occasional book.

 

We finish HOD in the mornings (most days) and I've been trying to plan a fun activity each afternoon. I'm thinking of picking a few activities per book and doing them over a couple of days...not really worrying about covering all five subjects.

[mom2boys030507]

I have been doing the basics and history, with a little science for fun. Two to Three times a year we do a full unit study. Last year, the month of Dec was Dinosaurs. My boys thought is was awesome, all of their math, copy work, reading well everything had something to do with Dino's. This Sept, we are going to study space. Here again everything, except math with be space related. I really enjoy these breaks in our schedule and so do my boys. I can't speak to finish a history cycle in a year because well I tend to change things and we started half way through last year so we haven't made it a year yet :)

[2_girls_mommy]

We regularly take breaks from our regular history to little mini units once or twice a year. Most years it is around Thanksgiving for a week of native American studies or pilgrims or the first Thanksgiving.. more traditional school stuff for that week. And other times we have done a week lapbook on Ireland/St. Patrick in March, Groundhogs in Feb. We have also taken off weeks to work on big projects like the PBS young writer's contest, or state fair entries, etc.

 

We don't do a science curric. We do WTM science, so it is no big deal to take off a week and do something different. We do SOTW, and the 1st year we managed to do it in 1 year (one whole year... 12 mos including over the summer.) We did not finish SOTW2 in 12 mos. It is going to be more like 13 or 14 this time. But that is ok.

[Kidlit]

Okay, so I'm giving myself permission to do this. For some reason, I am just itching to do something a little different. Geez--we're only four weeks in, and I'm already antsy. :tongue_smilie:

[Mandy in TN]

Has anyone done this? What I'm thinking about doing is taking a break from SOTW 1 and Elemental Science (maybe even --gasp!-- everything!) and rowing a FIAR title. I'm thinking this would give us a nice break. Too, my girls are still so young-I don't want to miss the opportunity to snuggle with them and read good literature. Will this make our history and science studies too disjointed? I'm thinking of making the units last a week.

This year my xtra student is using ABFIAR alongside her regular studies. click on the link and it will pull up what the Cuppycake has been up to.

 

When my little guy used WP AW in K, I added in some other unit study things. I know I did at least did Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews from FIAR Vol1. I also added in some Jan Brett things.

 

When my big boys were little and we were burning out on our regular science and history, I would pull out BF History of Science and do a week from it that covered about the same period that we were studying in history.

 

If you schedule your regular program for 30 or 32 weeks, this will make room for these breaks. Alternatively, you can run it over the top of your other studies (just continue them doing only what is necessary/ not doing everything you had planned) or plan on your school year being 40 weeks instead of 36.

 

HTH-

Mandy

[prairiegirl]

Thanks, prairiegirl! I'm assuming that you don't finish your science and history curricula in one year, then. Am I right? Or do you compensate for the lost weeks somehow?

 

Because we do history and science in blocks (2 hrs every day for a month) I do get my science program done. We don't use curriculum for history, I cobble it together on my own using various resources, so I don't have a 'book' to finish.

[2_girls_mommy]

Oh, I just remembered Christmas time last year. We did a week of "reindeer school." My mom was doing a reindeer unit in her P.S. classroom and shared so many good materials with me that we took off a week and did that. SO MUCH FUN! We made reindeer antlers out of their handprints, and sang reindeer songs. We did reindeer and other Christmas math sheets from enchanted learning. We read books about real reindeer and made an adorable little reindeer book that had a cover of a reindeer face and again their hands as antlers. For fun, we learned a poem about feeding reindeer and threw out magical reindeer food on the snow for Santa's reindeer (dry oatmeal and a little glitter.) You get the picture. My kids love a week like that once in awhile. I have also used planned units from homeschoolshare at times. Good stuff to be found there.