In my first year of homeschooling, I felt like I was a hot potato. I would hop from kid to kid answering questions. It was exhausting. So many evenings when my husband got home from work I would say I felt like I had not stopped moving all day. It was true! But, it was not an approach to homeschooling that led to success. It led to a frazzled, tired mom. To calm this chaos, I shifted to piecing together curriculum to create homeschool unit studies.
Piles of work to grade is not always the key to feeling accomplished. In fact, the whole group, unit study approach is how I learned to balance homeschooling my four children and engage their interests. It settled down our learning time and made learning fun.
My Approach for Piecing Together Curriculum for Homeschool
Piecing together curriculum for your homeschool teaches children how to do research. The process of discovery to search for local events, activities, classes, and information is doing research. I have been able to create meaningful and engaging homeschool unit studies with this approach.
It has been an essential method for successfully teaching multiple children together. I will cover my steps to building a learning unit from scratch.
Topic and Books
When I create a learning unit for my children, I start with the topic they want to learn. This may come from themes I present to them or requests they make on their own. It is based off what we need or want to teach in our homeschool. There are different regulations everywhere, so always check HSLDA for your state’s specific academic requirements.
When we have a topic, we head to the library. I look for any books on the topic that can support our learning. These include encyclopedias, reference books, non-fiction literature and fiction books that may touch on topics related to our theme. The free library is such a helpful resource for building learning units in your homeschool.
I skim the books to determine which will be used for photos, if I will read some all the way through in read aloud style, or I mark single pages here and there to refer to when we get to those topics. It allows me a loose organization to flex with our days but it gives me a plan.
Field Trips
After I skim the books we checked out, I start looking in our area for field trip options. For example, when we were studying geology in our homeschool, we walked along a trail and picked up rocks that caught our eyes. Back when we lived in California, the history of parks like Joshua Tree was a great supplement to our world history studies.
Many museums offer virtual field trips. If you live in an area that does not have a lot of museum options, search for museums in large cities to check out their online options. Remember that even getting out and exploring a nature trail can tie in to so many science and social studies topics.
Additional field trip spots to check out are botanical gardens, military sites and local harbors. Dig deep to check out what is special in your area.
Online Homeschool Resources
When we have our reading list, book references, and field trip bucket list, it is time to find some printable learning resources for worksheets and writing.
Sites like Teachers Pay Teachers and homeschool blogs offer helpful learning tools that often are very inexpensive or even free. On my blog, I have a free Geology Unit Planner, a Chemistry Unit, and many hands-on learning activities. Those are just a few examples of sites you can look at for online learning supplements.
The Benefits of Building Your Own Units
Piecing together curriculum is a way to save money on homeschool curriculum. It also brings creativity and flexibility into your homeschool routine. I used unit studies when I was teaching all four of my children in a whole group approach. It was the only way to eliminate jumping from child-to-child, because they were all together.
Love learning from Jaimi? She has been homeschooling for 8 years and shares learning activities for young children on up to older kids over on her blog The Stay-at-home Mom Survival Guide.
