Journey to Excellence

A great way to plan unit studies is to take advantage of inexpensive opportunities to attend the theatre. The Tulsa Performing Arts Center has a series for children called Young at Art. The tickets for the performances are only $4 per person. They have announced their series for the 2012-2013 season. And it's a good one! September 2012 ~ The True Story of the Three Little Pigs October 2012 ~ The Man Who Planted Trees January 2013 ~ Rock the Presidents April 2013 ~ Angelina Ballerina You can bet that we will be incorporating these performances into full literature-based unit studies! Stay tuned for our plans. I will be posting them closer to each event. After August 1, 2012, you can contact Carol Willis at 918.596.7105 or email her at cwillis@cityoftulsa.org to purchase your tickets for the Young at Art series. On a side note, but related, the Tulsa Performing Arts Center has lots of other performances in different theatres (but they cost a whole lot more). However,...

The piece of literature ... The themes ... The corresponding books ... The activities ... We almost have everything we need for a great unit study. But something is missing. In fact, it's that "something" that oftentimes starts me down the path for a particular unit study in the first place. It's time for the field trip. I mentioned in the first post of this series to always be on the lookout for inspiration . Be watching library billboards, community newspapers, blog posts, etc. , for something that might spark a particular interest in your kids (or in you .... sometimes just your enthusiasm is all your child needs to get enthusiastic, as well.) The Secret Garden unit study all started with me seeing a notice on our community blog for auditions for the upcoming community theatre production of the book. The actual play was to take place several months later, so it gave me time to plan the unit, read the book, and do all activities before the production...

We have the featured piece of literature. We have the study themes chosen. We have checked out our corresponding books from the library. And now we need to put together some daily activities to reinforce what we have been reading. Let's face it. Very rarely are we the VERY FIRST one to be forced to come up with some activity ideas for something we are studying. MANY have forged before us. And, I take advantage of those persons of inspiration DAILY! What in the world did we do before the internet?? I shudder to think. Like I previously stated, I knew that I wanted to do some activities with The Secret Garden around the themes of "gardens", "tea parties", and "plants". I specifically wanted to do a full plant unit. So I Googled. And I came upon a FREE plant unit study by Susan Kilbride at FuntasticUnitStudies . This study was one chapter from her book Science Unit Studies for Homeschoolers and Teachers (which I just received complimentary fr...

You have chosen your piece of literature. And you have narrowed down the themes you want to cover. Now is the fun part! You get to figure out what books and activities you will use in your unit study. This is my favorite part of planning a unit study. I could (and usually do) spend HOURS stalking my library and other blogs and websites for ideas. Lets start with the library . That's where I always start. For a unit study, each day we typically read a chapter or two of the featured piece of literature, read a picture book or two on the desired theme, and do an activity. The first thing I do is go to my public library website and do a search of the literature's title. The reason I do this is because sometimes there are books that have activities that tie right into that piece of literature. That happened with The Secret Garden . There is a book called Inside the Secret Garden: a treasury of crafts, recipes and activities by Carolyn Strom Collins that had baking reci...

Now that you have your piece of literature chosen, it's time to start planning your unit. It's now time to choose the themes you will study. Doing this will depend on how much you know about the book you are reading. I had never read The Secret Garden when I decided that we would do a unit on it. Of course if you have time, you can read the book first and jot down themes as you go . Or, you can easily do an internet search. Why reinvent the wheel? There are hundreds of thousands of people out there who have identified themes from literature and gladly posted about them. After some brief research, I decided that our themes would center around gardening and a full plant study . There was also the underlying theme of friendship and kindness that was going to be included in all of our discussions. I had read Charlotte's Web in my childhood, and had seen all of the movies about it. I knew that we would want to study farms, pigs, and spiders . And, what do you know, ...

Welcome to my part of the 5 Days Blog Hop sponsored by The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew . This week I will be giving you MY step-by-step instructions for building a Unit Study from a piece of literature. Typically I do this with my 2nd grader. However, the steps can be done with any level of education and any piece of literature from picture books to classic novels. I imagine that many homeschool moms WANT to do unit studies, especially from a book they are reading with their children. But it feels overwhelming! Where do you start? I will walk you through two unit studies I planned this winter. The first one was on The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett and the second was on Charlotte's Web by E.B. White. And there will be a Giveaway at the end of the week! I will be giving away the Classic Starts book and read-along cd of The Secret Garden and copies of all of my resources I used for my unit study. You will receive an entry for each comment you leave this ...