Organizing the School Year With Unit Studies

Unit studies can be a great curriculum choice for many families, opening up all kinds of learning and experiences as the year progresses. However, the organization of a school year around unit studies can sometimes be a bit intimidating. Perhaps a new baby has arrived or the once-happy-and-quiet infant has learned to walk and run, or grandma has moved in with you, or there is a big move coming up this year. These are all events that we can plan for and around when organizing the school year, as difficult as they might be at the time.

Expect the Unexpected

Lesson one in planning for the upcoming school year—expect the unexpected! Go ahead and plan and organize, but please remember to expect the unexpected. Realize that once you develop a plan for the upcoming school year, things are subject to change. For example, your child’s soccer team might make it to the state finals, or a bout of the flu might derail things for a week or two. If you are ready to be flexible, these variations from your well-planned school year will not radically disrupt your homeschooling. One of the advantages of using unit studies is that they are a great curriculum choice for “flexible” family learning and can be adjusted to fit changing situations.

Do the Math

Now that we have established the fact that our well-planned school year will not likely be implemented exactly as we design it, let’s jump in and start planning. Putting first things first, get a monthly calendar for the upcoming school year (August/September through May/June), tearing out each monthly page, and spread the months out on the table. To make things easier for planning and putting into action, number each week, starting with Week 1, from the start of this school year to the last week of the school year. For a state that requires 180 days of school in a year, this translates to 36 weeks of school, so your weeks would be numbered 1–36.

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.
Psalm 90:12 (KJV)

Now, take the time to enter important family events on these pages. These will include family birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, church events, reunions, vacation, and other special occasions. Next, gather up appointment cards and enter these dates on your calendar—doctor visits, dental appointments, orthodontic visits, surgery dates, academic testing, etc. You might not know exact dates for all of these, but probably have a good idea of the months that they will occur in—just note these in the top margin of the page so that you can remember them as you plan.

For many families, guests will be coming to visit throughout the year, and we need to make sure to include these visits when we plan. Their visits can be incorporated into the school plan in a meaningful way, making it more enjoyable for everyone. Many times your guests will enjoy participating in field trips and other unit study adventures, and they might have experience and wisdom to offer on the particular topics. For example, grandparents might have experience as military veterans or pilots—perfect for a Veteran’s Day unit study or perhaps a unit study on flight. If your visitor enjoys gardening, he or she might be able to help plan your family garden when you are working on a gardens unit study.

Seasons of Change and Adventure

Take some time now to see what the upcoming year is going to look like with your noted events on the calendar. You can probably begin to see how some times of the year will be shaping up to be much busier than others, making your job as school year planner a bit easier. The hectic times will be great candidates for shorter unit studies that take less focused daily time, while the slower times will be great for in-depth studies of more complex topics.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.
Ecclesiastes 3:1 (KJV)

One of the first things to look at as you begin to plan for the upcoming school year is the seasons themselves and how you can include them in your schedule. With each season come wonderful learning opportunities, chances to go outside to observe and learn about the world around us. Seasons are becoming hazier in the busyness of life, and many students miss the opportunity to study the amazing changes that take place with each passing season. With unit studies, you can plan a seasonal unit study for the week that each new season begins. For example, the first week of autumn begins in late September here in the Northern Hemisphere. Pencil in an outdoor unit study of autumn, such as Autumn Treasures, for that week and add in things like an apple orchard visit, a day of apple butter and pie making adventure, daily nature walks to see what is changing with the approach of the new season, and a day to map out the travels and life story of Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman).

By including the seasons in your unit studies, you keep your students active, involved, and aware of the world outside of the homeschool window. There have been days when our children spent time writing in the tree house or outside working on homeschool projects, watching the changes of the seasons move through our lives. Sometimes you would hear the kids shouting that the geese were honking overhead on their autumn journey south, or come running in with the first flowers of spring.

Along with the seasons come holidays—days that are looked forward to, prepared for, and celebrated by the whole family. Whatever your family holidays are, including them in your unit study plans for the year can be very rewarding for the whole clan, and will create memories that last a lifetime and build traditions for future generations. The holidays, their meaning, and traditions—these are carried from generation to generation, and can explain and reinforce your family values and beliefs in a way that nothing else can.

To give you an example of this, our family would begin a unit study on Thanksgiving during the last week of October. Lasting for four weeks, it would culminate on Thanksgiving Day, giving the children the opportunity to show off all of their hard work for family and friends gathered around the Thanksgiving dinner table. With Thanksgiving complete, we would move on to a four-week study of the real meaning of Christmas. Studying and preparing for this special celebration allowed us to deepen our faith, work on projects for neighbors and community, and learn so much biblical history and prophecy fulfillment. As a result of these special holiday studies and times spent together, our family’s faith and beliefs have been strengthened. Whatever holidays your family chooses to celebrate, include them in your unit study planning and enjoy the lessons and family building that can result.

Items of Interest

"Just as eating against one's will is injurious to health, so studying without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in."
~Leonardo Da Vinci

After including some seasonal unit studies, next it is time to include studies on topics that have captured your child’s interest. These interests will help you and your children eventually understand their God-given gifts and talents. That is part of our job as parents—to help them discover and develop these special, God-given gifts and talents. With unit studies, the world of their interests can be investigated and developed. What are your children interested in these days? Dogs, ballet, robots, baseball, dolls, or seashells? The list is endless, and now is the time to pencil in some of these topics for pursuit with unit studies this school year.

Don’t overlook the opportunity to pursue these interests in ways that work well with everything else happening on your family calendar. For example, the time to pursue an interest in baseball might be the four weeks leading up to Opening Day or the start of the World Series. For those with children who love soccer, a unit study can present a great opportunity to learn about the sport and athletes, as well as world history and geography.

Whether your child is a gifted artist, talented dancer, or budding astronaut, you can give him the time to pursue these passions under your watchful observation and guidance. Some of us have children who love to draw, and a unit study on cartoons or animation might be a perfect fit with their interests. If you have a child who is interested in space, you can take the time to focus on this curiosity with special studies, experiments, books, or even a trip to NASA to talk to astronauts and investigate opportunities for the future. From taking advantage of volunteer opportunities to helping them develop their own business that showcases their creations, you can open the world for your children as they continue to grow in wisdom and stature.

Your unit study topics can include room for creativity and investigation in so many ways. For children interested in art, plan studies that coincide with regional art museum and gallery displays. Include some of the great masters of art, and open their eyes to this area of interest as you walk through museums and other displays. Study the history of the world that was occurring when particular masters were painting or sculpting, as well as the geography of the events that were occurring at the time. You can do the same thing with music, writing, and many other areas of interest.

One of the fun memories that I hold dear is that of the time when our children learned how to make piñatas from a balloon—what amazing creativity they showed. All because we took the time to investigate just how piñatas were made. Of course, it didn’t hurt that they loved candy and swinging at things!

“Thank goodness I was never sent to school;
it would have rubbed off some of the originality.”
~Beatrix Potter

Thoughtful Progression

Of course, as you are now getting a plan in place and filling in the weeks of your school year plan, don’t overlook opportunities to include logical topic progression. In other words, if your child is interested in dolphins, sailing ships, and photography, you might want to study photography first to give him the tools to capture some of the hands-on learning adventures that might unfold while studying sea life and sailing ships. In all of your planning, make sure to get the tools in place when you can before progressing to the next topic.

Another example of this would be to study the human body first, then perhaps swimming or track before moving on to the Summer Olympics. I call it building a logical tree of knowledge, building knowledge along with thought connections so that the information is connected instead of existing in their minds in all kinds of random patterns. That was the problem with my own textbook education—I could memorize all kinds of tidbits of knowledge, dates, names, places and ideas, but none of them were connected. This was not a problem during my early education, but it made college studies so much more difficult.

Instead of a state-approved standardized curriculum developed to prepare students for standardized tests, give them an education that will last a lifetime, not just through an end-of-year test. Use real books, real people, and lifetime adventures with your unit studies to teach your children lessons that will help them for the rest of their lives. Help them develop a love of learning by getting back to the basics. Using the wealth of materials available today along with your time and commitment to help them learn, you will be surprised at how much your children can soak up and just how far this approach to education will take them.

The Best Laid Plans

Plan this school year, and introduce your children to the world while you are there to smooth the way. From missions trips to volunteer work at the nursing home, from canoe trips down the local river to beach walks full of sunshine—you can give them the world and be there to help them grow in it.

As I shared in the beginning, please expect the unexpected, and always make your school year plans in pencil instead of permanent ink. Sometimes our best years are those when the school year record of study did not closely resemble what I had planned for at the beginning of the year. Yet these were often the best years of learning and homeschooling.

As you go forward into this new year of homeschooling with unit studies, remember that unit studies can provide an excellent curriculum for your children. They can offer improved retention, more involved and hands-on learning, and connected thought processes and learning patterns. Whatever your topic choices and plan details, proceed boldly into the arena of learning, and don’t look back. As we say around here, always forward—today is a gift from God!

"Live today as if there were no tomorrow. We don’t get a second chance to say  'good job' or 'I am so proud of you' at the most important moment of accomplishment. Words of encouragement last a lifetime and then some. Share your legacy—your life—with your children."  —Amanda B.