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Educational Approach: Unit Studies

In a traditional school, each subject is studied separately and often one subject does not relate to another. You may be studying mammals in Science and the Civil War in History. In Math, it’s fractions. But, when we talk about a Unit Studies approach to schooling, we are talking about relating all the school subjects into one theme, or unit. Science, History, Language Arts, Math and even Art and Music are brought together and studied within the context of the unit theme. All the subjects are related to the others.

For example, if you have chosen to study the Classical Composers and you start with Beethoven, then your History will be biographies of Beethoven’s life and times. Geography will focus on Germany and Europe in the 1700’s and 1800’s. For Math, you’ll study the Metric system used in Europe. Science will include a study of how music travels in sound waves and the human anatomy of the ear. You may also include the important inventions of this time period. Your Language Arts will include reports and essays on Beethoven’s life and music. Your spelling words will be musical terms. And your children will write fictional short stories about Beethoven’s childhood. You will study the Art of the 1700’s and 1800’s and look at paintings by Beethoven’s contemporaries. Your children will try their hands at producing artwork in that style. For Music, you can listen to Beethoven’s symphonies. Your children who play instruments can learn to play some of Beethoven’s easier works.

As you can see, the sky’s the limit! You can go into as much detail as you want. Your children will get into it. This is a fun and engaging way to learn!

What it is not:

"Unit studies are not textbook studies. Textbook studies entail the study of as many as eight separate subjects, having little or no correlation to each other. … Each of these studies has merit, but is this the best way to learn? Is it not far better to be able to relate one subject to another and see how they work together?"

          - Valerie Bendt

Pros:

• All children in your homeschool can work at the same time on the same unit. You will save teaching time because you will cover the material once for all children, regardless of their age.
• You get to spend a lot of time with your children, learning and exploring together.

• Unit studies take advantage of your children’s natural curiosity.

• Studies have proven that children who learn through unit studies retain more information than those who learn subject by subject.

• You use real books to learn, not dry and dull textbooks. This is especially important for younger children who might not yet be proficient readers. Textbooks can be difficult and intimidating for younger children. But a biography, written at the child’s reading level is fun and interesting.

Cons:

• It takes a lot of your time to put together these unit studies and it takes lots of planning. You will need to prepare well ahead of time. It’s all up to you to make it happen. You are the project manager. If you don’t pull it all together and keep it all on track, it won’t happen.

• You are teaching all your children at once. I know I listed this as a pro, but it has a down side, too. It can be hard to keep your younger children’s attention focused while teaching or reading. If you have 30 minutes of material you need to cover, you can bet your 6 year old will be bored and restless after 10 minutes. Then, try factoring in your baby crying for attention or juice! It takes patience and perseverance.

• It can be hard to incorporate Math into a Unit study. You might consider using a separate, complete Math program for each child to make sure you’re covering everything you need.

• This last one is subjective. As my children got older, I felt it was important for them to be able to read and get information out of textbooks (even if they were dry and dull!). I was thinking ahead to college textbooks, which often are not fun and engaging! Of course, you can always incorporate textbooks as a source of information for your unit studies.

Prepared by Melanie Borton