Unit Study Gurus? Help me out? Advanced 6yo ds and trains :)

[Tawlas]

Okay, so I think I know what to do with my advanced first grader with the focus of a (six year old boy) gnat. Unit studies. We can read about what he likes (steam trains!) and he can pick up some science, history & geography, more in depth math, and all sorts of other fun things. He's spent the last three years learning with his older siblings, picked up waaaay more than I expected, but just doesn't have the attention span to keep up with their curriculum any more. He's passed them in reading ability, though, and is too advanced for other first or even some second grade curriculum. This seems like the perfect answer.

 

But how do I do it? I've looked through some books, internet sites, found some good resources, I think. I have a list of potentional topics we could cover. for instance, Math: time (train schedules), fractions (types of train cars), measurement (car lengths, train journeys). Science: steam engines, gears, why train tracks are level - building train tracks, expansion in tracks according to weather, bridges and tunnels. etc, etc

 

What now? Choose a spine, work through it a few pages or a chapter at a time? Supplement with other resources as needed? I'm a real box checker. I makes lists and the first thing I put on my list is "make a list" so I can check it off right away lol! But this little boy of mine throws me for a loop every time I try and plan for him: either it's too easy and he's bored or it takes too much focus, too much in one sitting and it's too much for his six year old little self. Maybe just keep a basket of resources that I think we may go through that week and see how far we get?

 

Any links to help me through this process? I'm entirely new to unit studies but I can only find preschool unit studies on trains and he's well beyond that.

 

TIA!

[Jackie]

For my 5yo sponge, I usually start at the library. I check out a wide variety of books on the topic at hand, at a wide variety of reading levels and depths. Those all go into one basket (we currently have a history basket full of Ancient Egypt books, a science basket full of water and weather books, and a fiction stack). And then we read. Sometimes I have a couple books planned for "read this first" and sometimes I don't. While we read, we talk. While we talk, we think of things we want to do related to the topic and we think of questions we want answered. And then we include those things. It snowballs and we keep going until we run out of steam on the topic.

 

ETA: I've tried planning more in depth ahead of time because planning is my preference. However, the best laid plans routinely get trampled by my daughter, who speeds up and slows down, becomes obsessed and then loses interest completely, all on her own schedule. This looser plan of having a huge stack of resources on hand and just tackling it a bit at a time has ended up being what works for us. I suspect more structure will come back in when she's older and (hopefully) more predictable.

[displace]

My rec would to have a lot of smaller factual and even non fiction books vs one big spine (unless you find one by DK that would interest your DS).

 

It would also be easy to incorporate a lot of history and geography and even logic (that board game or app ticket to ride). I would also discuss big picture concepts: how steam trains changed how towns were formed, how goods and people were moved around, how it changed population concentrations and increased travel.

 

Personally I would spend maybe a week on a topic or two (except math daily), so week one may be science of steam pressure and gears, week two building tracks/bridges, week three tunnels and history, week four geography and culture (rich people travelled better), week five global concepts, etc. and maybe as you're reading about steam engines you may come across other topics that sound good (coal as a fuel source and pollution, other steam driven machines, weather and train tracks and travel).

 

It would take me personally a while to plan all ahead of time. I tend to do weekly planning. But I'm not a unit study person in practice so idk what's best. I was just inspired to give a few thoughts.

[shernandez]

Treasured Conversations has a book called Designing Your Child's Curriculum for like $6.  It walk you through how she plans a study based on one of her children's interests.  It was written about an older child (middle school if I remember correctly), but you could easily adapt it to your younger son.  It is a fairly quick read, too.  

 

On another note, my dd is 7, and also an advanced learner.  I always have a hard time finding things for her because she has an insanely high reading level, but doesn't have the attention span to do most of the work on that high level.  We basically read a lot and do narrations.  Her latest favorite thing to do is make up comic pictures for the material she reads.  We are on a weather kick right now.  She checks out as many books she can find at the library on the topic and just reads through them during science time.  She makes me a notebooking page every few days on what she has read.  She also watches any documentaries/movies she can find (or that I can and she finds interesting).  I try to add in hands-on projects as often as possible, but I am honestly horrible at hands-on stuff (3, soon to be 4, under 3.5 is not conducive to it).  It isn't exactly a unit study per se, since I don't really mix it with other subjects, but she has definitely learned a lot.  

[Farrar]

Is your goal to try and do all subjects through this study, all subjects except for math, or have this just be the content subject or an extra while he works on reading, writing, and math (and maybe logic, vocabulary or whatever other programs you use) elsewhere?

 

Off the top of my head could you think about...

...building a model train set

...visiting a real steam train... Are there excursion trains near you?

...riding on a subway or commuter rail

...visiting the train station and watching the trains leave and come in

...drawing the trains

...playing Ticket to Ride

...using the train timetables for math

...ooh, speaking of timetables, this is probably a little ahead of him, but the episode of How We Got to Now, which is on Netflix now, about time, was totally about the history of train timetables!

...read books about trains... there are obviously some great picture books like Locomotive and Polar Express and so forth - and I know you said he's advanced as a reader, but these books can still be the best source of good, solid sentences with higher level vocabulary for copywork and dictation - but also maybe Boxcar Children? Or how about The Boundless (which, disclaimer, I haven't read, but heard was good)?

...train music - there's so much train music out there in country and bluegrass and folk music that he might explore and learn to play something simple on the piano maybe or just listen or learn to sing a song?

 

 

[Tawlas]

Awesome guys, thanks for your thoughts.

 

Farrar, there is actually a train museum near by, and across the ricer from us are trains all the time (not steam of course, but still). Near my parents' house is a restored-for-toursim steam train, which we've been on at least three times for his birthdays lol. There are tons of opportunity for field trips! I'm even considering taking a trip by train to a town a day away :) I've tracked down a few good resources, I'm sure there are more.

 

I guess I'm stuck more on exectution.

 

So basically, I just choose what I want to do, do it, and see where it leads us lol? I'm sure it seems really silly to some, but I *like* having a paper or page numbers/per day or lesson/per week and I'm not sure how to plan for this, if there's any planning at all. I guess I really just need to start and see what happens :P

[Farrar]

You can plan it all out if you want. My understanding is that 8's book can help with that.

 

I usually just plan the first books, the first activities, the first documentaries to watch, etc. And from there, we see where it goes. I often have in my head a little checklist... did we do some art with this, some science, some writing, some reading? One of the easiest go-to's is read and narrate or read and choose a copywork passage - for when you don't know what else to do.

[Tawlas]

Okay. I can do that. Thanks Farrar. I'll check out 8's book too. I'm in Canada and I know some of her stuff isn't available here, so hopefully that's not one of them!

 

I'm thinking this will cover content subjects and reading and sometimes supplement math. He's usually around while the older kids do FLL3 and I've incorporated him into CAP W&R Fable in a very modified way, so that's all good. He's picked up reading almost efortlessly and we're just about done OPGTR but I think I'm still going to go through at least AAS1 before deciding if that's something else that needs to change.

[FairProspects]

If you are ok with religious content, I'm pretty sure Amanda Bennett has a trains unit. It would make a good base to begin from anyway.

[Tawlas]

I'll check that out too, thanks FairProspect!

[ThursdayNext]

I'm following this. Let me know what all you end up using and how you like it. I might be able to tweak it and use during the summer.

I have a 4 year old who is also an advanced reader for his age. He is OBSESSED with trains. We drive 45 min to the train museum often, and did a full day trip on a train this fall.

We both liked a lot of the Usborne books on trains. And there are some great YouTube clips on how steam power works. Even I started to get it!

[Tawlas]

Well, maybe this  will interest you? I've ordered the first two hardcover books to see how we like them (with Book Depository).  It's a series of books written by a (retired?) train engineer for children aged 6-12 (actually, I think it says 3-90 but it specifically mentions that it's hard to find good books on trains for the over-preschool group).  I think this is where most of my technical/science info will come from for us since I admittedly know nothing about trains.  Looks like it would be pretty easy to fit in some simple physics (friction, inclined planes, etc) to go along with the technical pages they include with each chapter.  Mind you, I haven't used them yet, but I'll let you know if it's amazing.  Sure hope so!

 

Also, I was thinking, we could keep track of the lengths of trains going by our house across the river and graph them.  Note times and whether they are heading north or south.  Discuss car types and possible cargo.  And, if anyone else is wondering, train signals are complicated!  I mean, I'm starting to understand them after watching a 15 minute youtube video, but they may be beyond my ds :P

 

 

[ThursdayNext]

Thanks! I've got the first one in my Amazon cart. It looks like things my son would really be interested in. He always wants to know how things work and why. I noticed a page on that website with YouTube links. Those are the same ones we've been watching, and a couple new ones.

 

Too bad we don't live near the tracks. Those sound like good activities. (I mean, too bad for my son. I wouldn't want the noise.)

[Farrar]

I thought of this thread at the library today. I was waiting for ds to finish his research and just casually walking the stacks. Even though we were just at our little library, there were several books about the Transcontinental Railway. Most of them were beyond what I would usually suggest for a 6 yo, but for a bright good reader, maybe. I was like, wow, this is a cool topic with lots of avenues of exploration.

 

When my boys were little, we did the Western Maryland Scenic Railway one autumn - we rented a cabin in the mountains, took the train one day, hiked around other days. It was really fun. It has an historic turntable in Frostburg so you can watch them turn the locomotive around. It's really neat.