Oct 10
15
Building "nests"
When I first started homeschooling, I was afraid to do unit studies. They intimidated me because I didn’t have a schedule to follow or a book to tell me what to do. When we adopted, it was blatantly obvious that a super structured school day was not going to work. I had to help my kids learn to be comfortable with learning first and unit studies were a great way to do that.
Unit studies can be super simple. We started with only books and crafts. This was still a challenge but we were teaching our children to be comfortable and confident with learning so we kept at it. Our kids came to us unused to listening to books so we started with books well below their cognitive level and moved up as they matured. Here is an example of how one of those early unit studies worked:
We were doing a unit about birds so we found picture books at the library to read first. Do not discount the teaching power contained in the pages of a good picture book and don’t think you are selling your child short by using them. Some children aren’t ready to move to “age appropriate” books even at the age of 13–watch what they pick up first to find out what they’re drawn to. One thing I’ve learned is that picture books often have the best and most pertinent information. You can learn a lot from a picture book!
Don’t be afraid to ask your kids what they like. Have them peruse the stack of books you’ve chosen for your unit and choose the ones they like best. Remember how hard it is to learn from something that you don’t like. Also keep in mind–no judging allowed!
Alongside reading the books we set up a bird feeder together outside our dining room window and watched the birds eat. Each child had his own set of binoculars and we took lots of walks–observing every bird we saw and seeing if we could spot anything unusual. It was March and the spring birds were starting to migrate north again so it was very exciting.
The second week we kept reading but we added a few activities and crafts to accentuate what we had learned from the books. We made “nests” out of pretzels, melted chocolate, marshmallows, and peanuts. Of course, we had to eat the nests after we had talked about how birds build them. Tasty! We also ordered owl pellets and dissected them at the dining room table. Then, we glued the bones we found to card stock and tried to guess what the owl had eaten.
We culminated our unit by visiting the bird observation room at our local state park. We stayed there all day and walked trails, spotting birds and recording them in a beginner bird book that had stickers. My children still remember much of what we learned during that first unit study.
If you’d like to know more about teaching adopted kids at home or homeschool help for struggling learners, you can join my Parent to Parent Resource Club.
