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

Homeschool unit studies are the busy homeschool mom's answer to her "Please-let-me-make-progress-in-homeschool-this-week" prayer. Or at least the "Next Generation" of homeschool unit courses are. It is likely that if you were to do some homeschool research on the subject just a few months ago 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 next generation of homeschool units are designed to ease the burden of busy homeschool moms while engaging students in thoughtful learning.

But before we get into how things have changed, you should be aware of what how the older versions of this approach are 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One example of an outdated approach to homeschool unit studies is the "Lesson Plan Approach".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 looks somewhat like what a public school teacher would use in the classroom, it doesn't contain any text...(yes you read me correctly) it usually contains a list of library books that you must hunt down and 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 dong 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 guy 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 and history. The first time I saw a homeschool unit study course that said "This week your children will make ancient Greek costumes, perform a play, and recite Plato" I clicked away...real FAST.

I have no time for that, I'm a single mom. Plus when you dictate what gets done on which day - what tends to happen? That's right; Little guy 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.

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