Lesson 1: Getting Your Feet Wet in a Sea of Studies
1-5 Some Final Thoughts
So here you sit at the beginning of a course wondering just what you've gotten yourself into. Have no fear! I'll be guiding you step by step through the process of creating a unit study and before this course is over, you will be well on the way to presenting your kids with that dream study which you built yourself! Like many other home ed moms, when I began I purchased a standard set of textbooks, following a particular curriculum. After much mule-pushing and slave-driving I discovered my strong-willed child had her own ideas of what she wanted to learn when . . . and forcing the issue only made learning at home an exhausting, unrewarding experience for both of us.
Fortunately it didn't take too long to chuck the prepackaged program and start winging it with a style and material I knew I could sell to this tough crowd of one. The standard textbooks were still a part of the program, but cut apart and sewn together in a more palatable quilt of unit studies and well-timed traditional teaching moments. We didn't always get the material I wanted to cover done at the time I wanted it done, but I did gain a child with a passion for learning, a studious self-starter, motivated to learn what she needed to when she needed it. At age sixteen she officially began college majoring in computer science. Today, at age 18, she is a junior who is also an honor society member, a history tutor, and is helping to computerize several areas of the college. Above all she is a student who has not lost her passionate love of learning.
I credit homemade unit studies – many of which she designed -- with a major role in the outcome. Over the last decade I've experimented much . . . with some failures but far more successes. This study is the culmination of that time exploring the wondrous world of unit studies. These lessons will hopefully impart to you much of that same enthusiasm for a tried and true teaching method sure to add new life to your home education.
