Has anyone out there put together her/his own unit studies before? I think I'm going to try using unit studies for next year for DS7, so I'm starting to think about what's involved. I'm essentially a lazy person, so I'd prefer not to have to make the putting together into a full-time job.

I was hoping to get tips from anyone who has ideas. If you have anything to share, whether you are a homeschooler or not, please gimme what you got!

Thanks!

I've never put any together but I loved doing a unit on Bedouins in grade school. We made tents, food and even a paper mache camel We also learned a lot about the desert and nomadic lifestyles.

HHmm not sure what technically constitutes a unit study but what I've done in the past is to find a few non-fiction resources (books, movies) and a few fiction sources (books). I then google the topic to find any cool craft, science experiments or look in my myriad of experiment books for something to go w/ it.

So for my DS5 who asked me about clouds today, I'll get the non-fiction Let's Read and find OUt science books about water cycle. I'll get a beautifully illustrated poem about the water cycle (beautiful words so tie in language arts, using descriptive words in painting a pic in the reader's mind, rythem of poetry). I will look for an easy reader for him to read to me about weather, clouds etc. I'll look for fiction picture books about a rainy day or some such thing. Additionally, we'll watch Magic School Bus episode on evaporation/water cycle. We'll then do an experiment to look at the water cycle. You put salt water in a bowl. In the center you put another bowl. You wrap tightly in saran wrap and put a rock in the center. This will guide the evaporating water to the center and it will drip into the inner bowl. When you have enough water condensed, you taste it to see that it's no longer salty and is drinkable. We might also discuss how Survivor Man used this method in the desert for survival and might google this method as a survival technique. WE'll put a glass of ice next to a boiling kettle and watch condensation form.

Well you get the picture.

I've done this with history as well...find a good historical fiction to go along w/ the history less, find pics to add to a timeline, read non-fiction sources, watch a movie etc.

Is that what you're referring to?
Dazey

Yup. Pretty much, Dazey.

The idea I'm going with is to try to tie virtually all subjects into the unit. So if we do a robot unit, we'll read some stories about robots (lit), write stories about robots (composition), look at how robots work (science), study the history and development of robotics (history, science), design robots (art, engineering), construct our own robots from Lego or some such kits (art, science, engineering), do math problems related to building robots (math), etc.

Working math and science into a given unit will be easier for some topics than others, naturally. A unit doesn't have to be quite so comprehensive to work, but it would be nice if we could cover at least most of the biggies in each unit.

We're currently thinking we'll do units on robots, ancient Greece, Arabic (he was thinking the language, but since I don't speak it, we'll definitely broaden our scope to history, math, science, food and lit there!), comparative religion and myth, the Ohio River, and dinosaurs...so far.

Does that sound like a good start? Any obvious problems anyone sees there?

If you want to cut down on your legwork, what I did was to google "dinosaur unit study." It pulled up several resources. Also, if you post at Well Trained Mind curriculum board, people will either post what they did or point you to their blog showing you what they did. Some have book lists at Amazon that might include both fiction and non-fiction sources. I have some resources written down for Ancient Greece which I'll post later.

Do you have LEGO MINDSTORMs NXT kit? No better way to learn robotics and programming.

Oh a friend of mine wrote a unit study on comparative religion and myth. I'll look it up and post a link later.

Only that they didn't have robots in ancient Greece... !

(FWIW, that's how my private school worked!)

It sounds fun!

To be honest, Dazey, I haven't been wild about the pre-packaged units I've seen online. They tend to be either too easy or too craft-oriented. Real art that involves creativity and design, I like. But I tend to hate and despise pre-made, adult-designed craft projects that only require kids to cut on the dotted lines and paste as directed. They always seem like time-wasters for kids to me. What exactly do they get out of them that they couldn't get out of drawing something of their own?

Anyway, I came to the conclusion that I'm probably going to have to go it mostly alone. I have some resouces that I plan to use for the units, naturally. But even in homeschooling, that old HG+ dilemma of asynchronous development crops up and makes a lot of the stuff that's out there pretty useless. Plus the library is free, and a lot of the pre-packaged unit studies charge for their use. So mostly I plan to raid the library, much as I did this past year. I just plan to do it with a bit more rhyme and reason than I used before!

I'm glad you asked about the Lego Mindstorms kit. Where does one get one of those? That kit was part of my current plan, actually, since I'd heard about it earlier this year and it sounds perfect. But I don't know if you just go to Target or wherever and buy one, if you get them online from specialty suppliers, or if there's some other source required. I'd be grateful for help on that one! Thanks!

And Dottie, you're a goof! So your private school had robots in ancient Greece? (LOL!)

P.S. Dottie: What exactly are you detoxing? You're not fasting and living on lemon juice and cayenne pepper or some such thing, are you?

Oh my private school had its moments, LOL!

I'm supposed to be detoxing from my internet addiction, but I'm only on step 2 I think.