Homeschool Unit Studies, Thematic Units, or Unit Study Courses...Whichever Way You Say It - These Little Babies Can Make Life SIMPLE!

It is likely that if you were to do some homeschool research on the subject before The Simple Homeschool came along, you'd only find a shell of a lesson plan or worse yet, nothing but webquests and links that never worked trying to pass them off as "unit study" (and even charging you a few bucks in the process!)

The Simple Homeschool has homeschool unit study curriculum called Simple Schooling. These complete and comprehensive unit courses are the next generation of homeschool units and are designed to ease the burden of busy homeschool moms while engaging students in thoughtful learning.

IN fact - we now have a whole NEW class of unit studies from Simple Schooling. If you are a subscriber to our bi-monthly newsletter chances are, you've already seen them. But if not - take a gander yonder at the future.

But before we really get into how things have changed, you should be aware of what how the older versions of the unit study approach were structured because that is what you will most likely find when you do your research using specific keywords.

One example of an outdated approach to homeschool unit studies is the "Lesson Plan Approach". The lesson plan:

1. Looks like what a public school teacher would use in the classroom
2. It doesn't contain any text...(yes you read me correctly)
3. It usually contains a list of library books that you must hunt down, and
4. Will have a corresponding list of daily activities that you must implement to do the "hands on" type stuff.

Let's tangent here for a minute and talk about hand on stuff. Sometimes hands on stuff is great - I mean if you're doing a unit study on horses and you have a horse close by - why hey! Horseback riding is a great hands on activity. If you live in the Bronx - maybe not so much.

If you're doing a chemistry unit and the "lesson plan" calls for hands on time involving a few not so common "household" chemicals (they like that word household, as IF every household has aluminum potassium sulfate or laboratory grade hydrogen peroxide lying around.)

Anyway - your little hands on "experiment" calls for a whole list of supplies, so you go buy this and that from this and that store, and then find out your youngest made water balloons out of the rubber gloves...etc. Time can and will pass you by and low and behold - your little homeschool accomplished nothing this week.

Little Moe is behind, (again) because this stupid curriculum is too darn complicated and time consuming.

I mean really, maybe some people have time to go hunting for books and supplies every week but I get that chance maybe once in a month tops.

Too many hands on activities make homeschool moms crazy - especially in science. Luckily I have some great science curriculums that you can take a look at and most of hands on types will offer a kit of supplies to make life easier.

Typically a unit study won't do that though - they leave you high and dry.

Believe me - the first time I saw a homeschool unit studies course that said "This week your children will make ancient Greek costumes, perform a play, and recite Plato" I clicked away...FAST.

I got no time for that. Plus when you dictate what gets done on which day - what tends to happen? That's right; Little Moe wants to be difficult and self pace his education and asks for two MORE days to make costumes.

But your plan only gave you one day for costumes and now you either have to be behind next week or skip Plato recitation.

Hard call.

The general gist of the Next Generation Homeschool Unit Studies Course is this:

It contains both a comprehensive text book and a detailed workbook with activities that, for the most part, do not take a whole lot of preparation or time OR as in the case with our new units - it provides a complete interactive learning experience on the computer.

1. It can last anywhere from one week to six weeks and will almost always have a comprehensive "project" day or week at the end where you and your child get their fill of hand's on activities
2. It tells you an abundance of information on ONE topic. For example - Ancient Greece. Your child learns about the culture, customs, and people of ancient Greece in an in depth way by studying the gods and goddesses, the city-state government, food, trade, and on and on.
3. It is meant to be used in conjunction with (supplemented with) a math program, a reading program (unless you're doing literature units), and any other major subjects not using the homeschool unit studies format, like spelling.

Homeschool unit studies are also good for electives when you want the subject to be high interest, like horses, but it isn't a specific subject typically required, like Ancient Greek History.

If the words Ancient Greek History scare you - relax! Welcome to homeschool history!

Let's go ahead and take a look now at the Classical Method...

Leave Homeschool Unit Studies and Move on to Classical Homeschooling