One of the most frequent questions I receive is how I go about planning a Unit Study or how I stretch a preexisting one. Since I decided that this would be my plan again for the 2019-2020 school year, I thought it was about time to share how I’ve handled this process over the past three years. I know you are probably a very busy mom, as am I, so I’m going to keep this as short and sweet as possible! It’s not fancy, but it’s real. It’s exactly what the process looks like – scribbly handwriting and all. Below are affiliate links for your convenience.
The first step when creating a unit study is to choose a topic. A unit study can be as long or as short as you want it to be. There are no rules. Just make sure that you pick a broad enough topic to fill your desired timeframe. I personally like a good rhythm and I hate the planning portion, so I’ve always leaned toward
Once you have a topic, you need to either find an existing unit to use (or stretch) or create the unit from scratch. If you are doing it from scratch, you can ignore the next few paragraphs where I discuss stretching units. The vast majority of our homeschooling units over the past three years have been the result of me stretching units from The Peaceful Press. We have stretched The Peaceful Preschool twice and have randomly done a few of their month-long units. I’ve always stretched them to be double in length. My daughters are currently 4 and 6 (nearly) and we will be completing the new Freshwater Guide for the next two months. After that, we will continue with their guides for the rest of the school year. We recently moved to a house with a pond on the lot, so I knew this was a topic we would be interested in this year. Once I had my topic and a preexisting unit, I was ready to start stretching!
I love to write things down so I always take a blank white paper, add a header and sections, and begin brainstorming. I write down any curriculums I’ll be using and any ideas I might have off the top of my head.
Since I am doing the Freshwater Unit next, that’s what I will reference from here on out. I printed out the weekly calendars and then printed all weekly activity instructions on one page. This allowed me to go through and highlight the items that I felt were age-appropriate or that would be of interest to us. I realize that this page has everything highlighted, but usually, there are quite a few activities that may not fit our interests or skill level (and that’s ok!). Here is a shot of what I do with activities we want to skip or replace:
I knew after reading the description of the diorama that I wouldn’t actually want to take that project on, so I substituted a pretend play setup. I also decided to pick a different community service activity. Once I go through all of the weekly calendars, I realistically decide how many weeks it would take us personally to complete the activities. Now this will vary for everyone, but in the case of the Freshwater Guide, I felt that one week each for Rivers and Marshes would suffice. That left me with 3 weeks of Ponds and 3 weeks of Lakes.
So not fancy, but if I know I have an 8-week unit, I simply fold a white paper and write out my weekly plans. Because the girls are fascinated with our local ponds and lakes, I knew this would be the bulk of our unit. I was also very impressed with the variety of activities for the River and Marshes weeks, so there really won’t be much for me to add. Now that I am at this point, I can see that I will need to add in activities to get the Pond and Lake portions from 1 to 3 weeks. That’s when I head to Pinterest. If you are doing the unit from scratch, this is where I would normally begin.
I always start by creating two boards – one “chosen” and one “additional”. Whenever I have a few free moments, I search for applicable projects, activities, or ideas. I save all of them to the “additional” board. I also go through my
I add these, along with the existing Freshwater Guide activities, to my planning calendar pages. I absolutely love these printable planning pages! I print them for every unit, hole punch them, and add them to one of these folders. These are the same folders that I keep the girls’ morning work in (more on that later). I make sure to write in any holidays or trips as well, as we often take breaks from school in those instances.
I will also record any outings, playdates, or appointments that I am aware of at the time. Realistically, I usually only commit to 1-2 bigger craft or activities a week. I know there is no way we are going to get that messy every day of the week. EVERY weekday morning we sit at the breakfast table and do morning work, read a few books and work on little-prep activities. Then a couple of days a week we will commit to a bigger project. This mixed with 1-2 outings a week, a ton of unstructured play, and a massive amount of
Speaking of
Lastly, and my personal favorite, I track down any books that we may need. First, I check our town’s library online and reserve any books that I am interested in. Next, I go through all of our bookshelves and collect applicable books. Lastly, if there are any books I know I have the budget for and are items we could use in the years to come, I purchase them online. I usually go to eBay or used book sites, as they have the best prices. I also want to mention how I handle any specific books that are recommended by Peaceful Press that I can’t locate. Rather than try to buy them, I simply search for their titles on YouTube. Almost every single book I have looked up has always had a read-aloud video that we can enjoy – and it’s free!
Once all of that planning is complete, I print and prep everything before the unit. I keep it all in a folder so I can easily pull out what I need each week or day. It’s a lot of work upfront, but then I am stress-free for 2 months. Since it is a very popular question, here is a link to our printer. I absolutely love it and have never had an issue with it. I also highly recommend the HP Instant Ink program. A homeschool mom recommended it to me a few months ago and I wish I would have looked into it sooner. You pay monthly for a set amount of printed pages, not ink. That means you can print high-quality color pages and not worry about the insane amount of ink cartridges you would use!!! I have the $9.99/mo for 300 pages plan and it has saved us a ton of money. I go through 2-3 cartridges a month which would be $20 each. Any unused pages roll over and you can upgrade or downgrade your page amount at any time. This link will give you a free month as well!
So that pretty much sums up how I go about planning or stretching a unit study! In the next few
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