Most unusual/course you made up yourself/off-the-beaten path classes?

[Queserasera]

I'm interested in the most unusual courses you've seen or made up yourself? I'm looking to have a fun year next year with not using straight textbooks. What classes have you designed? High school and grade school!

[Gil]

The boys give weekly presentations on a topic that they picked. No matter how random or niche or whatever the topic, they research it for a week and prepare an oral presentation and create a display board, then they dress up on the weekend and present their topic.

[HeWillSoar]

There is a physics unit where you take the kids to a theme park.  We haven't done it but I'd like to this spring. 

[Dmmetler]

We've done a full year on Ranid and Hylid frogs in our area, including Frogwatch training to learn to identify them by sound and sight, building and researching ponds, and tracking frog use, which culminated in presenting her research to the state Herpetological society.

[PeterPan]

Like dmmetler, the unusual things my dd does are because she got interested in, not because I thought it up.  However, if you want to put them in the way of getting interested in things that could become consuming projects like that, National History Day is FABULOUS.  You'd actually have enough time to get a project done this year if you start now.  :)

[Piper]

We recently took our elementary- aged kids to sit in on a civil court case for a while, and used that as a spring board to learning more about courts and how they function. That was rather fun. You could go all sorts of ways with that, depending on your kids' ages.

[Gil]

I'm planning a full sequence of courses in culinary skills. I'm also planning a full sequence of IT type courses. Both of which will be began while the boys are in 3rd grade.

[scbusf]

I am seriously considering taking all the random, free homeschool stuff I've downloaded over the past couple of years and just doing all of it for a while!

[deerforest]

DD's K year was pretty much spent studying mammalian birth. She was truly passionate about it. I'd wager that's an unusual topic, particularly for that age.

[macmacmoo]

I'm not creative enough to have made a curriculum. But complete random I took a history of fashion course in college... keep in mind I was getting an accounting degree. It was a really neat seeing how history played a roll. I hope to one day tie it into a history cycle. 

[Rosie_0801]

I am seriously considering taking all the random, free homeschool stuff I've downloaded over the past couple of years and just doing all of it for a while!

 

There's some pretty good random free stuff online, isn't there? :lol:

 

We've been doing architecture and human rights.

[lisabees]

Not too unusual, but we have done Social Entrepreneurship, a Tolkien Study, Women's Studies, Food Science, and Evolution.

 

Elizabeth, I would feel lost, I think, doing National History Day.  Are there plans to help keep organized and on track?

[....]

This was a few years ago, so I'm trying to remember exactly what we did...but we did a Survival Skills unit study that was awesome.  Here's a list of what I remember:

 

1.  My Side of the Mountain - for literature.

2.  Peterson's Guide to clouds and weather (we spent time outside with the guide identifying clouds and weather conditions)

3.  First Aid book - we went through the book, bought a really good first aid kit and went through everything - showing the kids how to use all of it.  They also made their own first aid kits and we put them in the cars, backpacks, etc.

4.  Book about survival - we read through this together

5.  Book about fire safety and we practiced what to do if we had a house fire.  Ironically, not a month later, we had a house fire (our clothes dryer caught fire) and had to call fire department/evacuate everyone.  My kids knew exactly what to do (thank God we practiced fire safety).

6.  We worked through a knot-tying book.  I bought paracord at Home Depot and we just sat in a circle and worked through the different knots.

7.  We went hiking a few times and spent a morning walking along a beach identifying tracks, looking at washed-up fish skeletons (lol), etc.  

Edited December 15, 2015 by Evanthe

[J-rap]

I don't think it was so unusual, but just different, for us.  When my kids were in 8th grade, I let them choose a semester course on anything they wanted (within reason  :)).  One chose ancient China.  That was sooo interesting!  We watched movies that took place during ancient China about real people, read fascinating books, etc.  I loved that unit!

 

Another daughter wanted to study England during Dickens' times.  There was even a book called that I think, that we read.  It talked about what life was like for the typical family and children, mostly in London, during the time of Dickens.  That was a really interesting unit too.

[Junie]

I put together a high school half-credit lit class:  Fairy Tales, Fables, Myths, and Legends.

 

It included: reading a large selection of fairy tales (the complete works of Grimm and Andersen), comparing a dozen Cinderella stories, reading several myth stories from various cultures, a selection of Aesop's Fables and Anglo-Saxon riddles, watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Star Wars and discussing characterization/other elements of an epic story, reading several pourquoi tales (including Kipling's Just So Stories), and a selection of folk tales.

 

This was a very input-heavy class, with little output, but it was a lot of reading.  I am working on creating more assignments for when my girls do this class.

[SkateLeft]

My oldest did a year long study on dystopian literature for English. That fall, she picked up a used copy of Fahrenheit 451 while volunteering at a thrift store and woke me up in the middle of the night saying, "I just finished this book, and I REALLY want to talk about it!" We ditched our other English plans that year, and ended up spending a fantastic year on dystopian novels, short stories, poem and film.

 

That same kid also did a semester long course called Science in Art when she was in high school. It's interesting to look back at now, because she's a CS/studio art double major. :)

 

Oh, and she also has high school credit for Celestial Navigation. Along with my husband, she's an avid sailor and spent a lot of time cruising the CA coast and Lake Superior with him, so we used the ASA materials and she earned ASA certification in Celestial Navigation. (She has a handful of ASA certifications, but that's the only one I gave her high school credit for taking.)

 

My other kids haven't been quite so exciting. #2's most unusual course was a year we spent on Egypt, and #3 hasn't really done much yet that's really out of the box.

[PeterPan]

Not too unusual, but we have done Social Entrepreneurship, a Tolkien Study, Women's Studies, Food Science, and Evolution.

 

Elizabeth, I would feel lost, I think, doing National History Day.  Are there plans to help keep organized and on track?

Sorry, I almost missed this!  Um, NHD at the national level has booklets you can order that come with DVDs.  You buy them for each project type, and EVERYTHING you need to know is in there.  Also you can google and find quite easily previous projects.  And the NHD national site has the national level winning projects each year.  

 

If you look for your state history day org, you'll find tons there too.  They can hook you up with a mentor.  They will have workshops on how to do research, etc.  You can see their listings of winners from previous years and then google to find those kids' projects.  

 

You also have the resources on the board here, because several ladies have done this with their kids.  If you go over to the hs board and post, they might come out of the woodwork.  

 

I'm NOT a history person btw.  Totally not.  Like I'm the Biggest History Hater on the board.  I can certify it with my years of posts, hehe.  Each project category has very specific, formulaic criteria, so you just take their interest, see what project type fits their topic (availability of resources) and gifts, and run with it.  It's a ton of fun, and only at the state level does it get a little hairy competitive.  The *judges* make it very much about affirming the work of the kids.  They make EVERY kid that comes through there feel like a rock star and like what they did was valuable.  Sometimes these kids are writing about very personal topics like grandparents, their family immigrating from another country, whatever.  This can be very personal and rewarding even if the project doesn't go all the way to nationals or something.  It's also an approach that is *flexible* to fit the interests of kids.  Science topics can do AMAZINGLY well in National History Day.  It's all about the angle you take it from and whether you ask a question (have a thesis) that is worth pondering and do good analysis.  I've seen several science topics go to nationals, absolutely.

[ElizabethB]

We've done a full year on Ranid and Hylid frogs in our area, including Frogwatch training to learn to identify them by sound and sight, building and researching ponds, and tracking frog use, which culminated in presenting her research to the state Herpetological society.

And my daughter did the same with fence lizards when she was younger, she found out stuff about them that was not available on the web or in books, but I have now confirmed online, the herp people caught up to her research, LOL.

 

She never went to any conferences or anything but she did do a lot of lizard observing and recording.

 

Now she is drawing cartoons for my phonics charts!! She actually did both in her free time and does not realize, even at 13, that these are things that could be considered work or school.

 

My son plays with lego technic gears and motors, he knows way more about gears and gear ratios than me. He also does not consider this school or work and builds in his free time.

 

They also do things that have little redeeming value, LOL, but I encourage any positive interests with support and encouragement and materials and reference books if needed.

Edited December 16, 2015 by ElizabethB

[Holly]

I'm not sure how "unusual" it is, and I didn't make it up myself, but we are doing a new subject this year.  While looking at CM schedules from her schools, I noticed two subjects: Paper Sloyd and Practical Geometry.  After doing some research I decided to add these and my DC love them!  

 

For Paper Sloyd we are using a public domain book: Paper Sloyd for Primary Grades.  I added in some fun scrapbook paper.  They are so excited when we do a new project!  We've made envelopes, picture frames, hanging pockets, and pinwheels so far.  

 

For Practical Geometry, I bought them each a geometry set (ours include triangles, protractor, compass, & divider).  We started with a public domain book, but I found it difficult to teach from.  We are currently using a more modern book called Compass Drawings.  Eventually, I hope to cover a bit of Euclid with them. 

 

These two subjects have been great for teaching following directions, paying attention to details, learning to use rulers and other geometrical tools, learning the importance of accuracy, and learning some basic geometry concepts.

[momto2Cs]

We used The Dangerous Book for Boys and The Daring Book for Girls for "lesson plans" for a while. It was fun! We covered bits of history, science, Latin, physical activities, games, Morse code, etc.

[Carrie12345]

I'm not fully making it up on my own, but my dds are doing Food Systems and Nutrition for science this year.  My interest, not exactly theirs.  I hate that I gave so little thought to food for over 30 years, and I want them to have a decent grasp of the personal, environmental, economic, cultural, and political aspects of this basic human need while I still have their attention.

[Donna]

My dd is interested in anything Irish (and music) so we did a course on

-History of the Celts (with videos and books on Celts, Irish legend, and fairytales)

-History of Irish Music (again Internet searches, videos on the Internet, and she is slowly working on interviewing Irish musicians and putting them up on her blog…she is getting better and better at the interview thing so learning more now than when she started a couple years ago. Her goal is to have an entire collection of interviews of Irish musicians and their memories of Irish musicians no longer living.)

-Will start a free online Irish History Course (1912-1923) available in March.

 

We did a course on geology years ago before and during our trip to Yellowstone and other national parks in the west.

 

My ds used a series of EdX (I think) courses and books to put together a course on sound recording/engineering and is now using his knowledge to record tracks for friends and bands he plays with.

 

 

Edited December 18, 2015 by Donna

[Mom2OandE]

I taught Interior Design to 10 middle school age kids last year. I started with a free curriculum from a Utah university and modified it to be more hands on versus worksheets. We had fun.

[Rosie_0801]

I taught Interior Design to 10 middle school age kids last year. I started with a free curriculum from a Utah university and modified it to be more hands on versus worksheets. We had fun.

 

Where would I find that?

[Targhee]

We did WA State cultural and natural history. We did very little political history, and instead focused on place. Loved putting this class together.

[helena]

We did a year long study of tea. Tea cultures, geography, technique, rating them... :) it was fun, and jump started the whole joy of tea and poetry/read aloud time.

 

Opera/ballet. Year long schedules, lots of old books, links, outings, etc

 

gardening journals. full of glued in seed packets, updates, photos, sketches, pressed plants, etc

 

herbariums. one of my all time favorites. 

[TarynB]

I'm not fully making it up on my own, but my dds are doing Food Systems and Nutrition for science this year.  My interest, not exactly theirs.  I hate that I gave so little thought to food for over 30 years, and I want them to have a decent grasp of the personal, environmental, economic, cultural, and political aspects of this basic human need while I still have their attention.

 

Would you mind sharing resources/links you're using for this? It sounds like a fantastic topic to study.

 

[MariaT]

One semester we did geology-- I found a slim book at the library that had multiple projects to do at home. That turned out to be awesome prep for that summer when we drove out to Philmont, NM and stopped to look at the extinct volcanoes.

 

For a coop class I put together a Mysteries of the Middle Ages, based on a book by Thomas Cahill with the same title, and the book 1215, about Magna Carta. I made a trivia game, with colored paper stepping stones taped to the floor, and the color was coded to a category of question. I wanted to make it so that when you stepped on a black paper you got the Black Death and had to go to the beginning, but I realized at the last minute I didn't have black construction paper, so I used brown paper, and the kids called it the Brown Death. The game was set up so that many students got the Brown Death. I was just learning to teach coop classes, so I put in tons of time into carefully crafted, deeply researched powerpoints, during which the students fidgeted while I lectured. I have since learned to shift the learning to the students and cut back on the powerpoints and lectures.

 

I  taught a Renaissance Coop class, using as a spine (for myself) A Very Short History of the Renaissance, with additional readings, online projects. It included a board game I made up called Scholastics vs Humanists, in which an up-and-coming new middle class Italian family, the Salamis, are trying to decide whether to send their children to the old monastery for a scholastic education, or try the new-fangled humanist approach. We had a unit on the Age of Exploration, where the kids made papier-mache world maps, painted them, then painted the different routes of European explorers. We also used a book, Galileo for Children, and used some of the science demos in there to recreate Galileo's experiments. I tied this with a separate coop class I taught on Renaissance art, where I introduced different artists and we did projects based on them. For Brunelleschi's dome they made sugar cube domes. For da Vinci's Last Supper we re-enacted the painting as a still life. I put together a game-- guess the Bible story -- and showed religious paintings by the masters, and the kids had to ID the story. Judith slaying Holofernes was a great favorite, and that semester Artemisia Gentileschi's painting of that scene was at the Art Institute Chicago, so we all took a field trip to look at it.

 

I taught Homer's Odyssey at coop-- the kids read the book, learned some ancient Greek history, made dioramas of their favorite scenes. Then they worked together to create a 10-minute film version. The film part of the class took months-- they all kept arguing. But we met for 3 long days in the summer and they finished it. Oldest DS says it is now unwatchable, but they had a blast doing it, and made life-long friends.

 

[Nancy in NH]

Dog Mascots Through History--a course I designed for my son who has some learning challenges and who loves dogs.  I found a great book, The Pawprints of History, and another, 100 Dogs Who Changed Civilization.  The lesson plan was nothing fancy, but it kept his attention and supplemented his very dry, barebones history text in 9th grade (which was about all he could handle at the time...).

 

Nancy in NH

[Carrie12345]

Would you mind sharing resources/links you're using for this? It sounds like a fantastic topic to study.

 

 

We're using Johns Hopkins' Teaching the Food System, which is awesome. http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/teaching-the-food-system/curriculum/ That'll be followed up by a re-watching of Food Inc with discussion questions (pulled from a million different links) and maybe some Michael Pollan.  My dds have volunteered on a local sustainable farm before, so I'm trying to get them on 1 or 2 others this spring/summer to compare. Otherwise, I may just suck it up and take them to see Polyface. I've always wanted to go!

 

For Nutrition, I'm heavily adapting a random college textbook, combined with chapters from my personal training manual and picking and choosing activities from Drexel's Nutrition Education program. http://deptapp08.drexel.edu/nutritioneducation/index.html And they're reading some cool books like Chew on This, Fueling the Teen Machine, and Fuel for Young Athletes.

 

I'm absolutely bending it toward my own personal philosophies, which worried me a bit when I was first thinking it through.  But they're bombarded with mainstream messages every day without my help.

[TarynB]

We're using Johns Hopkins' Teaching the Food System, which is awesome. http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/teaching-the-food-system/curriculum/ That'll be followed up by a re-watching of Food Inc with discussion questions (pulled from a million different links) and maybe some Michael Pollan.  My dds have volunteered on a local sustainable farm before, so I'm trying to get them on 1 or 2 others this spring/summer to compare. Otherwise, I may just suck it up and take them to see Polyface. I've always wanted to go!

 

For Nutrition, I'm heavily adapting a random college textbook, combined with chapters from my personal training manual and picking and choosing activities from Drexel's Nutrition Education program. http://deptapp08.drexel.edu/nutritioneducation/index.html And they're reading some cool books like Chew on This, Fueling the Teen Machine, and Fuel for Young Athletes.

 

I'm absolutely bending it toward my own personal philosophies, which worried me a bit when I was first thinking it through.  But they're bombarded with mainstream messages every day without my help.

 

Carrie, thank you for taking the time to share your resources! I appreciate that very much. 

 

On a related note, I thought of you as I was browsing today through the upcoming class list on Coursera, and noticed one that might be of interest to you. It's called "Introduction to Food and Health".  https://www.coursera.org/learn/food-and-health

 

Quote:

"About this Course - Around the world, we find ourselves facing global epidemics of obesity, Type 2 Diabetes and other predominantly diet-related diseases. To address these public health crises, we urgently need to explore innovative strategies for promoting healthful eating. There is strong evidence that global increases in the consumption of heavily processed foods, coupled with cultural shifts away from the preparation of food in the home, have contributed to high rates of preventable, chronic disease. In this course, learners will be given the information and practical skills they need to begin optimizing the way they eat. This course will shift the focus away from reductionist discussions about nutrients and move, instead, towards practical discussions about real food and the environment in which we consume it. By the end of this course, learners should have the tools they need to distinguish between foods that will support their health and those that threaten it. In addition, we will present a compelling rationale for a return to simple home cooking, an integral part of our efforts to live longer, healthier lives."

 

[Carrie12345]

Carrie, thank you for taking the time to share your resources! I appreciate that very much. 

 

On a related note, I thought of you as I was browsing today through the upcoming class list on Coursera, and noticed one that might be of interest to you. It's called "Introduction to Food and Health".  https://www.coursera.org/learn/food-and-health

 

 

 

Thank you for that!  I think I'm on the watch lists for a couple of nutrition courses, but I hadn't seen that one... or I forgot to actually hit the button, lol.

 

There's on on sustainable agriculture beginning in March!

[merylvdm]

Like some others have posted, the unusual courses I did with my kids where their ideas. My older son asked to do Game Theory after learning about it in Economics. I was a littel horrified as I had no clue what it was, but I found a Great Courses video series which I bought. I then emailed the lecturer and asked for book recommendations to supplement it and he responded and gave me some ideas. 

 

Then when my second son asked to do it I found a series of videos with some online interactive games (can't remember which college put them out - Stanford or Harvard or Yale I think)

 

I added some movies that illustrate Game Theory (I found a website listing some - Princess Bride is one of them) and got him to finish up by selecting any topic to do a paper on (he chose Game Theory in Genesis if I remember correctly!)  

 

Other classes I had to "make up": Linguistics, Arthurian Legend in English Literature, Computer Graphic Design

[SeaConquest]

Like some others have posted, the unusual courses I did with my kids where their ideas. My older son asked to do Game Theory after learning about it in Economics. I was a littel horrified as I had no clue what it was, but I found a Great Courses video series which I bought. I then emailed the lecturer and asked for book recommendations to supplement it and he responded and gave me some ideas. 

 

Then when my second son asked to do it I found a series of videos with some online interactive games (can't remember which college put them out - Stanford or Harvard or Yale I think)

 

I added some movies that illustrate Game Theory (I found a website listing some - Princess Bride is one of them) and got him to finish up by selecting any topic to do a paper on (he chose Game Theory in Genesis if I remember correctly!)  

 

Other classes I had to "make up": Linguistics, Arthurian Legend in English Literature, Computer Graphic Design

 

O/T, but I would love to know the books and videos you used in your Game Theory class. 

[merylvdm]

O/T, but I would love to know the books and videos you used in your Game Theory class. 

 

Great Courses: Games People Play - http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/games-people-play-game-theory-in-life-business-and-beyond.html

 

It was Yale videos: http://oyc.yale.edu/economics/econ-159(I remembered :))

 

Books - Thinking Strategically by Dixit, Prisoner's Dilemma by Poundstone. There may have been others but I am away for the vacation and when I went on Amazon those were the 2 I recognized.

[Neige]

I just have a preschooler now, but I teach the History of Medicine (from Antiquity to present) at a university part-time, so I imagine I will incorporate a fair amount of that into our history lessons when the time comes. 

[momto2Cs]

Revisiting this thread as I am now putting together a history course for now through the end of our school year based on Downton Abbey. I found a couple of Downton timelines that are helping me piece it together, and then I'm adding on books, movies, and documentaries that expand on topics mentioned, or show what was happening elsewhere. For example, we already studied the Titanic disaster, and right now we're reading The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia, which I see as complimentary to the time period. We'll watch The Last Emperor, to see what happened in China, and dd and I are reading The Flame Trees of Thika (starts in 1913). Other topics we'll cover are WWI, nursing, women's rights/sufferage, the Spanish flu, British presence in India, and so forth.

 

I'll call it "Overview of Modern History, part 1" or something like that for ds's transcript.

[freeindeed]

These are awesome ideas! I taught a Harry Potter themed unit to my middle schoolers last year. We had a blast!

[Dmmetler]

I am currently preparing not one, but two music units based around Star Wars-one for k-3, one for middle school ages :). The younger kids will be working on beat/rhythm, basic vocal skills, and basic recorder skills, the older kids will be working on studying John Williams as a composer and working on compositional techniques (the last is for a middle school co-op). I'm excited :)

[Lucy the Valiant]

We printed out Flat Rangers one year, and the kids randomly sent them to various National Parks near and far. WOW! Just, WOW! The kids were SO THRILLED to get the rangers home, and some of the parks put quite a bit of time & attention into the flat rangers. HUGE motivator for my upper-elementary kids to really dig in to American geography and also history.

 

Educationally, we covered letter writing, geography, presentation styles (they shared their special locations), business day turnarounds (some parks were a lot faster than others, which gave us some good conversations about staffing / federal funding / etc. - stuff I didn't realize they didn't know, but of course how would they), a rough introduction to the postal service and the larger branches of American government (my kids thought the parks should be under the Dept of Education! :lol: ).

 

And they never even realized I was counting it as school.