Need ideas for short unit studies

[lulalu]

What are some short unit studies you have done during upper elementary? 

I am thinking through a study on advertising, coding, typing, and we have a bunch of snap circuits kits too. 

What have you and your children enjoyed learning about? And if you have favorite resources add those too. 

[Porridge]

Idea #1:

Breakthrough - how three people saved blue babies and changed medicine forever (Jim Murphy)

Pair with a unit on the circulatory system

The Body Book (Donald SIlver) has some paper models you can make with your kids

You can probably find some youtube videos on congenital heart defects

https://www.weareteachers.com/circulatory-system-activities/

[Vasha]

Financial literacy: investing/stock market, digital/cryptocurrency, Dave Ramsey, daily life money management

[Vasha]

Check out iCivics.org for ideas too.

[lulalu]

12 hours ago, Vasha said:

Check out iCivics.org for ideas too.

Thanks! This looks like a great site. 

[Miss Tick]

There was a good and free one about viruses that came out at the beginning of the pandemic - from Panda Press.

[Vasha]

Art/craft like calligraphy, Zentangle, watercolor....there are virtual classes available.

Good luck!

[Idalou]

Aquaculture was a big hit. I just started by googling Aquaculture for kids+students. We'd been to fish hatcheries so the assumed they knew it all. Shrimp and seaweed farms were their favorites.

[Ellie]

Well, those are all really interesting, but they aren't unit studies.  A unit study is doing everything (history, geography, science, arts and crafts, literature, maybe Bible) except English and math skills while studying something like lighthouses, or antique carousels, or a series of books (such as Prairie Primer and the Little House books, or Where the River and the Brook Meet and the Anne books) or godly character traits (KONOS).

[caffeineandbooks]

2 hours ago, Ellie said:

Well, those are all really interesting, but they aren't unit studies.  A unit study is doing everything (history, geography, science, arts and crafts, literature, maybe Bible) except English and math skills while studying something like lighthouses, or antique carousels, or a series of books (such as Prairie Primer and the Little House books, or Where the River and the Brook Meet and the Anne books) or godly character traits (KONOS).

The OP gave examples of the kinds of topical study she had in mind, and boardies responded in kind.  I don't think we have to take Crosswalk as some kind of gatekeeper for what might be called a unit study.

[HomeAgain]

One of the favorite unit studies we've done has been survival.  I pair up a literature book with our history and expand greatly on it.  I wrote an entire 70-ish page file for my kid when we did Jamestown, tackling Blood On The River (literature) and bringing in how to read primary source documents and science experiments to tackle problems settlers faced (like clean water).

Other favorite has been learning how codes and spy techniques have evolved through the years.  We revisited this again when MIT announced they figured out the letter lock on the last note Mary, QoS sent.  As we move through history we take side trips into the spy and secretive world, learning how math, substitutions, etc. are used to keep secrets.

[2_girls_mommy]

On 1/3/2022 at 9:03 AM, SusanC said:

There was a good and free one about viruses that came out at the beginning of the pandemic - from Panda Press.

We did this one over the summer of 2020 It had s.ome good experiments in it, and my teens had a Thinking Tree journal with a lot of notebooking pages for pandemic history in it that went nicely with it. 

[Ellie]

On 1/4/2022 at 3:28 AM, caffeineandbooks said:

The OP gave examples of the kinds of topical study she had in mind, and boardies responded in kind.  I don't think we have to take Crosswalk as some kind of gatekeeper for what might be called a unit study.

Wow. How kind of you to reply and clarify things for me. Forty years of homeschooling is pretty useless, I guess. Thanks for the newbie support.

[Dianthus]

I'm interested too. 

@lulalu , did you find something?

Edited January 10, 2022 by Spirea

[lulalu]

On 1/10/2022 at 12:46 AM, Spirea said:

I'm interested too. 

@lulalu , did you find something?

Next week we are going to read through Made You Look, and learn about advertising. It should take about 4 weeks. We need more to fill up the next few months, but I haven't picked yet what we will do. I probably will do a short unit on civics.