There are a number of different methods that homeschool teachers use to help their students learn. Some use a regular school text book, others don’t touch any formal texts at all. As long as the homeschooled child learns what he needs at his grade level, its all okay. One popular homeschool method of teaching is using unit studies.

What is a Unit Study?

A single theme or topic is taken up in the unit study over a period of time. The topic is explored in depth and often integrates many different school subjects in it. For instance if you were to study mammals as a unit study you would begin with types of mammals in biology, them move on to where they live in geography, figure out their Latin based species names in language skills, count how many of them are in existence and do comparative studies of populations in math. The topic or theme stays mammals but you study them from the point of view of every school subject differently.

Who should take on Unit Studies?

Ask yourself a few questions to see if you and your homeschool classroom are ready for Unit Studies. Are you a creative teacher who likes to make things interesting and fun? Do you want to spark the interest of your homeschool students in a manner that makes them want to learn more about a theme or topic on their own? Would you like to teach all your children of different ages all together in the classroom? Do you have the resilience to accept certain gaps in your child’s education during the academic session? If you answered yes to all these questions, then you probably will do well with unit studies.

 What you should guard against

In Unit Studies there are no set assignments that the children must finish, so it can be difficult to assess the exact amount of learning happening. You can remedy this by having pop quizzes to check who remembers how much of the stuff being gone through. Also since this is a very activity intense type of learning, the teacher may be exhausted setting up one activity after the other. So give yourself some space between unit studies to have regular classes as well.