Writing Your Own Unit Study

The house is still and quiet.  Your children are asleep.  You grab your morning coffee and sit down with the shiny new Teacher Guide from your most recent curriculum purchase.  You run your hand over the book’s smooth and unblemished cover.  That cracking sound you hear as you break open the book is so satisfying.  You enjoy the aroma and flavor of your coffee as the mug warms your hands.  The pages of your new book beckon.  You’ll start from the beginning tomorrow, right now you just want to wander through the pages, absorb the beautiful illustrations, skim the headings, daydream about the learning…

…Tomorrow comes, the honeymoon ends and the work begins.   You begin at the beginning, thoroughly reading each section and taking copious notes.  After finishing 3 or 4 different sections of the new Teacher Guide, you re-read your notes.  You realize that many of them aren’t just ideas on field trips and enrichment to expand this curriculum, but comments like;

“D bored? Change to ___”

“J did last year. Do ___ instead”

“Too wordy. Use ___”

“Re-write quiz questions”

Because you know what types of learners your children are, you know you will be re-writing so much of the new curriculum that the shine is quickly fading.

The idea of creating your own curriculum can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be.  Think about it for just a minute.  

Do you act on any of those notes you made while perusing the new Teacher Guides?  

Do you pick and choose what you use out of any textbook, workbook or teaching plan?  

You probably even change things around inside a Unit Study based on your children’s interests and learning styles.

So…have you ever thought about writing your own Unit Study? 

“From scratch?” you ask. 

“But…I’m not a curriculum expert…where would I start?”

“But…there are already plenty to choose from, even free ones…why should I write my own?”

You can, and you should, at least once!

Please don’t get me wrong, there are many, many inexpensive (or even free!) Unit Studies that are great resources to use, either as-is or with some minor tweaks.  I’m not suggesting that using a published curriculum, literature guide, Unit Study or textbook is bad!  Not at all!  We’ve used all of them in our home with our children.

But…if you’ve ever thought about creating something for your children to use, you really should give it a try!  

Don’t be afraid that you can’t write a Unit Study.  

Google.  There are websites with free guides that can help.  

Go to the library or bookstore.  There are books that can help.  

You can take a class or seminar in writing one.  Many of my favorite homeschool support sites offer guides and courses.

Whether you want a short and simple extra project, or a week-long, all-subject curriculum around a single topic, there are really 5 simple steps to develop a Unit Study.  (Although in our house, Unit Studies never stay simple or on a single topic.)  We have created Units around people, places and things; events in history, family trips, the Olympics, various novels, science topics, countries, and even math.

You can do this!

Is our homeschool style eclectic? What does an eclectic homeschool look like?

River ferry trip

Most homeschoolers naturally use more than one approach to learning.  The very idea that one style fits every child, or that every child learns the same way, is incorrect.  It’s also what drives many of us to bring our children home to learn in the first place.  Some children can look at something once and remember everything they read, some children need to hear it spoken multiple times, some children learn best while they are moving….the list goes on.

Charlotte Mason…Classical…Traditional School at Home…Co-Ops…On-Line Public School…Unit Studies…no one style or curriculum works for every child.  No one style works for every child for every “subject”.  No one style even works for every child every day! 

Utilizing an eclectic, or “relaxed” style has many benefits;

You can match the curriculum to your child’s learning style and for each subject you want to teach.   For example;

• Unit studies and projects can cover many subjects and topics, and you can add in worksheets and videos for some additional science and math topics as needed.
• Co-Ops can help with subjects you aren’t comfortable with, or simply a way to help your child with social skills.
• Math can be learned on-line Monday, at the grocery store on Tuesday, as part of a History Unit on Wednesday, with a worksheet on Thursday, and while playing a board game on Friday!

Comfy reading pillows

Being relaxed means you can be flexible enough to change things as necessary. 

• You aren’t tied to an expensive curriculum when it doesn’t appear to be working.
• Your education plans can change and work with a major life event such as a move, new baby, or illness.

Engaging your children in the process of planning, developing, and evaluating their own experiences can help you cultivate a lifelong love of learning. 

Eclectic learning lets you incorporate life into learning instead of dividing life from “school”.  This means all learning, such as family trips, chores, videos, music lessons, family game night, and the dinnertime discussion about the museum you visited last year all count as “school”.

You can help your children see how things fit together.  Since life doesn’t happen in a vacuum, it isn’t divided into subjects and it only makes sense to learn as a whole.  Learning about Autumn and the leaves that change can include;

• literature (books and poetry about Autumn),
• writing (poetry or a story about Autumn or colors),
• geography (map of where the leaves change),
• science (identifying trees, chromatography & why the colors happen),
• math (estimating how many leaves on a tree in a clearing vs in the woods),
• art (leaf collages or crayon ‘stained glass’),
• history (what parts of trees have traditionally been used for dyes, food, housing)

Jamestown Settlement trip

Over the years, my family has used workbooks, textbooks, online programs, videos, games, loads of fiction and non-fiction books from the library, parts of free teacher guides from textbook and other publishers, trips to museums, businesses and other cities, pets, free and purchased Unit Studies, and units my children and I have created.  We prefer the term “eclectic”, since there are many days where the learning is quite intense or busy, and don’t seem “relaxed” at all!