Maybe you’re like me, and as winter seems to stretch on forever, your creative juices quit flowing freely and turn into more of a slow trickle of ideas.
The excitement of educating those you love kind of begins to wane.
I’ve found a solution to those winter doldrums that works for me, and I’m hoping, maybe will for you too–Unit Studies.
Each winter, between President’s Day and Easter, I throw in a themed unit study or two(depending on when Easter falls).
And we dive ALL IN to these unit studies!
I try to pick something that we haven’t done before so that it helps to stimulate my creative juices and get them flowing freely again.
I also like to encourage my children to get excited about learning about something new; something that they wouldn’t necessarily choose.
Over the years, here are some of my favorites that we have done:
- Dinosaurs
- Oceans
- Outer Space
- Ancient Egypt
- Human Body
- Dr. Seuss(or another favorite author–we did Eric Carle last year!)
- Food & Nutrition
- Photography
- Survivor
- Titanic
This year, we are diving into…..
CHICKENS!
This may seem extremely odd, but since we’re facing a long-distance move that includes a whole different lifestyle than we’re used to, it’s perfect for us.
My youngest son, now 12, has wanted chickens for as long as I can remember(actually when he was 2, he wanted penguins, but you get what I’m saying).
With living in the city, chickens weren’t a realistic option for us.
Even though my oldest two children have graduated, they are just as excited about this as I am.
We are starting by researching different types of chickens and figuring out what our goals are for having chickens(the children have made it clear that we will NOT be eating them).
Next week, we are going to draw out some designs for building our own chicken coop, as well as studying how to keep predators away.
I’m not sure where this unit study will take us for sure, but I’m kind of hoping that we wind up with a good understanding of chickens at the end of this(and perhaps a coop full of them).
My favorite part of this chicken unit study is sharing it with my family.
I absolutely love it when a unit study truly involves my whole family and cherish the memories we make while learning and growing together.
This sums up my homeschooling philosophy perfectly:
Learning and growing together as a family!
I encourage you to choose a subject that you don’t know a whole lot about and dive into it right alongside your children.
Children retain so much more knowledge and understanding when they are enjoying learning.
By watching your enthusiasm, and seeing you immersing yourself into the learning experience too, you are setting your children up to understand that learning never ends, but rather that
LEARNING IS A WAY OF LIFE.
Here is an example of how I use a unit study in our life, https://learningisawayoflife.com/hibernation-unit-study/
This was my favorite book when I first got started with Unit Studies:
Some more resources you may enjoy:
