Tips For Writing Your Own Unit Studies?

[Paige]

If you've organized your own unit studies, what advice would you give to a newbie and how do you think it worked out?

 

I haven't been able to find what I want already put together and planned for history and geography for my children next year. I really want to combine them and I don't want to focus on just history or geography for a year. I looked into Galloping the Globe, MFW ECC, WP, HOD, TOG and all look nice but not perfect. My son is a little old for Galloping the Globe and I don't want all of the extra subjects in the other programs. It seems like a waste of a lot of money to buy a complete curriculum for just the history and then tweak it all day.

 

Last night, I had an epiphany- I could do it myself! I'm a good planner and fairly well educated so how hard can it be? Am I setting myself for a big headache? Next year will only be my second year homeschooling and I have never done a unit study like I am hoping to do. We are using WP's Human Body and Forensics for science this year and I like the layout of their schedule and I'm hoping to create one that is similar to guide me through and keep us on task.

 

My plan is to combine SOTW 2, since that's the history I want to cover next year, with a Galloping the Globe type approach. I'm not sure if I should go ahead and buy Galloping the Globe as a guide based on the reviews I've seen. I'm not sure I want to use the countries they use, and with the internet, I could probably come up with resources just as easily myself. I would plan the countries and activities and we would learn a little about the current people and history of each country or land area during the time period of SOTW2 whether or not that area is covered in Story of the World. For areas the SOTW talks about, we would spend a little more time. I want it to be fun, supported with good literature and primary sources, and for them to create their own notebooks for each area, we'd plug things into the timeline we're already working on for this year, and for it to be something they really remember and can work on together yet still personalized for their ages, and still have time for all their other subjects. I will have kids 10, 7, 7, and 4. Does this sound doable or way too ambitious? I thought if we liked it, we could keep it up every year and cycle through like we do in history and going deeper each year into some countries while adding new ones as well.

[Irishmommy]

Look at Guesthollow and Homeschoolshare before you go out into the wild blue yonder by yourself. You can always just pull from what others have done.

 

I'm in a Hands of a Child online co-op and love that too. Lots of ladies coming together to share the load of writing unit extenders for the Hands of a Child Project packs.

[prairiegirl]

I wrote out my own unit studies but I pulled from other sources and pooled it all together. I would decide what topic we wanted to cover then I googled that topic with online lesson plans. I found oodles doing it that way. I just took the activities that I knew would work for us. I also used Homeschool Share (link is in post above) They have a subject index that I used and took from their ideas. I pooled it all together with aome of my own ideas and we had some great units.

[swimmermom3]

A resource that I have found helpful in developing unit studies is Joy of Discovery: How to Teach with Unit Studies by Barbara Wagner from Hewitt Homeschool.

[AngelBee]

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[Guest aquiverfull]

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