What is a unit study?  Well, when you create a unit study, you’re selecting ONE topic that will be used through all subjects.  Sounds daunting, but really, it’s fun and a great way to get creative.  Steps make everything in life easier, so here are the steps I use when I’m creating a unit study.

1) The obvious step – choose a topic.  This last marking period I created 2 unit studies – one for the revolutionary war and one for oceanography – both very broad topics, which brings me to step number …

2) You need to narrow your topic down.  Find an objective.   Create an objective by determining what you’re going to study exactly.  For example, for my oceanography unit study my objective for Megan was ~> “student will be able to give detail about life in the ocean, and the different habitats according to the depth, as well as identify the layers and animals that live there.”

3) Resources can be astronomical in price, but in order not to break the bank (and if you’re homeschooling, you’re probably a one income family) you need to look where the resources are free, or at the very least at little cost.  The first obvious resource is the Internet.  The Library is extremely useful, as well as local museums or other community outreach programs.

4) Determine how long you plan to spend on the unit study.  A week?  2 weeks?  a month? an entire marking period?

5) This is where the other subjects come in.  What other supplemental activities will you have?  For oceanography we started the very first day talking about the book of Genesis and how all life began in the sea and spent the first day reading through the creation of the world.  Biblical studies – check.  As for history, we looked at how people viewed the ocean back in the early days of exploration and how the men traveling with Columbus begged him to turn back for fear they would fall off the Earth because they believed it was flat.  For math, we talked about the tides, and the depth of the ocean as well as the pressure in the deeper parts of the ocean.  For science, we looked at specific animals, and learned about them in detail, finishing it off with language arts in a report (or rather, several mini reports).  Arts and crafts came into the mix when she created a lapbook to show off all she had learned.  We took field trips to a couple museums and an aquarium to see a real life tide pool that she got to touch and interact with.

6) The most important thing — have fun!  Be flexible!  Take your child’s lead and adjust the course when need be.  If you find your child isn’t learning it the way you though he or she would, look at it and find out what you need to fix it.  I’ve found that if my daughter and I are going head to head, it’s usually MY head that’s gotten in the way of her learning, so I need to step back and change what I’M doing.  As long as you keep your objective in mind, you’ll get the task accomplished.

Hope this helps.  Happy Homeschooling!