Homeschooling in California

I read the term’ unit studies’ in various places, education books, and homeschool chat boards, for quite awhile before I knew what it meant. A few weeks ago, we actually used a reptile and amphibian unity study pack that our advisor gave us when my daughter asked to learn about snakes.

Basically, a unit study takes a topic that’s interesting to the child, and teaches as many subjects as possible around that topic. So, Hannah wanted to learn about snakes. So we read books about snakes (science and reading), looked at pictures of snakes, and painted and drew pictures of snakes (art), counted, sorted, and graphed all our reptile toys (math), made up a story about a snake (writing), Looked up where some snakes live on a map (science and social studies), and so on.

It was really a lot of fun. As a mom, I liked the way this type of learning combines many subjects, and shows the interconnectedness of learning. That math, for example, is relevant to other subjects. That all subjects can relate to each other in some way. I think it helps show how subjects fit into real life better than having every subject stand all alone.

That said, we were pretty well tired of learning about reptiles and amphibians after two weeks. Although, since we’ve moved on to other topics, Hannah still brings up, and wants to talk about what she learned about reptiles, so I know that unit studies can really stick with a kid.