Where to fit short unit studies into a WTM school schedule?

[Annabel Lee]

Earlier this summer, I discovered Amanda Bennett's unit studies. It started with the Elections study. It's only 4 weeks long if used as scheduled (could shorten the time it takes with some tweaking), it's an important topic, and the dc are about to see it all play out in real life this year. What a perfect opportunity, right?

 

Then I noticed the sports-themed units and a few others my boys would LOVE. School might hold their interest and there might be a spark of delight. That thought keeps me trying to find a way to make this work.

 

However, I have no plans to put aside our regular WTM school schedule for this. I could adapt slightly, but I do want to get through the work ahead of us.

 

Is there a way to fit these in that I'm just not seeing?

[Joyofsixreboot]

:bigear:

[skeeterbug]

:bigear:

 

I'm having this problem too. We completed an Olympics lapbook and I've discovered my son loves lapbooking. We've already started another one and we've got more in our future. But if we spend every afternoon on interest-led lapbooking we'll never get any history or science done. How to fit it in? I want to encourage him in this so I really want to work it in to our day.

[JoyceTWTM]

 

Is there a way to fit these in that I'm just not seeing?

 

Could you cover more TWTM topics in shorter timeframe and take time for your other things

[2_girls_mommy]

We did short unit studies when my kids were younger that were out of the history timeframe for different reasons.

 

Sometimes I put aside our English or writing because they were getting plenty of copywork and vocabulary and other work in the unit study. Usually we just continued math as usual. I would use sentences from the unit study for dictation instead of from my usual source. Science for us was always kind of free, so if it contained science, then that was our science and it didn't put us off track to get back to whatever we were covering for WTM rotations that year. There was no schedule.

 

To add in something different you kind of have 2 options. You can do it in little bits so that you don't stop doing everything else. Or you can do it all at once and put other things on hold for a couple of days.

 

We never did every part of any lapbook or unit study we were working on. And we usually did them quickly, like over 1 or 2 days, so that we could get back to our regular studies.

 

But occasionally we would take a rabbit trail and put everything aside for a week to dig into a topic (reindeer at Christmas, St. Patrick and Ireland in March, etc.)