Creating Unit Studies

When I went in search of curricula for some subjects, sometimes I couldn't find what I was looking for. I started pulling together a mishmash of resources, and only later started thinking of some of these as unit studies. I thought I'd share the steps I go through in creating these.

1. Choose a topic. This includes not only the general topic, but any areas we want to focus on. We consider how deep we want to go and a general idea of how much time we want to spend.

Example: My daughter requested a unit on chemistry. She wanted quite a lot of information on it, definitely wants to cover the periodic table/elements, and wants lots of hands-on. We had a big trip scheduled, which presents a natural ending point for us, so we had about 6-8 weeks to spend on this.

2. Start gathering resources. Ask on homeschooling groups, do internet searches, see what the library has, take a critical look at anything we already have in the house we can use, check out online MOOCs, field trip opportunities. The idea here is to see what is available to you, not to do any choosing yet.

Example: "Chemistry" is rather a huge topic, so I decided to start by asking on one of the homeschooling groups to get ideas for materials others have found especially good. I needed to narrow the field. I knew we had a couple things in the house, including a molecular modeling kit, so I wanted to incorporate that. I got recommendations for a huge amount of books, curricula, websites, apps, and kits.

3. Evaluate the resources. Some just won't fit with your goals, your ages/abilities, your interests, your time frame, your budget. You might want to keep a record of these for the future, but take them out of your options for now. Some will hopefully be standouts and have you and your child really excited about jumping in - these are the essential pieces you can most build your unit around. Some are very good, but not spectacular - if they are affordable, then these are great to have on hand for open exploration even if you don't formally incorporate them into the unit. Some may not make you excited, but are the best choice for fulfilling some aspect of your goals.

Example: So much stuff! I find this the most overwhelming part of planning a unit because I want to include ALL THE GREAT STUFF! I had been wanting to try the Ellen McHenry units for a while, and she has one called The Elements, so I looked at a sample with my daughter, who agreed it appeared to be a good fit, so that became one of our main pieces. There are games in that, but not much in the way of experiments, so I needed something to fulfill that piece. I was planning on a traditional chemistry set, and Thames and Kosmos has some decently well rated ones at a fair price, so I looked there. While looking there, I came across Candy Chemistry - light on the chemistry but heavy on the fun and the candy! My daughter is young, and we'll definitely do more serious takes on chemistry later, so I went with Candy Chemistry. The kit is a bit ridiculously priced, so I downloaded the manual for free and gathered the supplies. There are some great books that were available at the library, and some recommended apps that were priced ok, so I added those to the stack, though I don't intend to formally include them. Add in a periodic table placemat, and videos from subscription sites we already have and we can easily fill our time!

4. What else can I incorporate? What can I let go of in the rest of our schooling?

Example: We were ready for a break from formal math, and there's a fair bit of math in chemistry anyway, so we shelved our math program for a bit. She kept some notes and did some written activities, so handwriting was covered. We were just about to do a bit on crystals in science anyway, so we did that and also included the crystal growing kit I had for that - fits in perfectly alongside the chemistry unit!