Homeschool things, that is...not "doe, a deer"! 

In my previous posts, I talked about having a vision for your child and your "philosophy of education".    Once these things have been pondered and prayed about it will be easier to find your "favorite things" in homeschooling. 

First, let me say that homeschooling should be a joy not drudgery.  If it is drudgery for you, I want to encourage you to seek God and ask Him to give you joy ~ for only he can give true joy~ and discernment~ what needs to change; curriculum, attitude, schedule.  I'm not trying to imply that homeschooling is easy or should never be hard or even frustrating.  Joy has nothing to do with how hard something is.  Joy is bouyancy amidst the storms  of life.  It's knowing that you're doing what God wants you to do and having the faith that He will take care of the results. 

I have had to learn this lesson the hard way and through this journey I have come across things that have enriched our homeschool experience.  I'll be sharing some of these things over the next few blogs.  These are things that God has lead our family to, that doesn't mean that these are things He wants your family to use.  That's where the discernment also comes in. 

We are very eclectic homeschoolers and very laid back.  I believe that children need lots of time ~ time to explore their world, time to get bored, time to be creative, and time to work.  If they are spending all their time doing paperwork or playing video games, these other things will not happen. 

We like things that we can do together and are good for multi ages, unit studies are a good fit. 

Since we love to read, we love the Five in a Row series!  This is a literature based unit study.  I didn't do much reading as a child and therefore was very overwhelmed when I first started taking my children to the library.  This series gave me the names of some really good books that were age appropriate for my children and even activities to go along with them.  The idea is that you read the same book for five days in a row, hence the name Five in a Row, and each day you focus on a different aspect of the story, maybe geography on Monday, art on Tuesday, character on Wednesday, ect.  We didn't always do this "exactly" the way the authors suggest, we tweaked it to fit our family. 

Other unit studies we love are the Amanda Bennett unit studies.  Most of the units are four weeks long.  There's work for older children and younger children, wonderful read alouds and family projects, great copy work and the price is very nominal.  These studies come on a cd-rom or you can save a few dollars on shipping and order a downloadable ebook from CurrClick .  Some of the titles include Elections, American Government, Gardens, Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Pioneers, Scrapbooking, Birthdays, Baseball, Car Racing, Light Houses and Flight. 

There are many other unit studies that can be found online, some are even free, and I've written some for our family to use.  What I really appreciate about Five in a Row and Amanda Bennett's unit studies is that most of the prep work is done for me, all I have to do is get the books and supplies and we can start.  With some studies that I found online and with the ones I wrote, I spent much more time planning than we did learning.  Which led to much frustration for all of us. 

What are some of your favorite unit studies? Feel free to share in the comments.  

Next time we'll talk about math.