Lesson 3: Thematic Springboards Part I: Subject Unit Study Ideas
3-3 Social Studies
But you may be more comfortable with a short, structured study. Let's take a look at a favorite subject for such an approach: History. As we were studying the American colonial period and the revolution, we decided to conduct a unit study on the period. Actually we ended up doing a number of varying lengths and formats over the years. However, in the early days I remember one simple unit study that lasted but a day. It's influence was so positive that it inspired many, many more studies over the years.
We had recently gotten Jenny the American Girls' stories about Felicity, a fictional daughter of a colonial Williamsburg shop owner. The details brought colonial Williamsburg to life . . . certainly for me since Bob and I had lived in Tidewater Virginia for many years, making almost weekly Sunday visits to the restored colonial capitol. To bring life to it for Jenny as well, I prepared a unit study based on a day in the life of the colonial village. I played tour guide to the various shops which were different rooms in the house. In each room I had placed props like pieces to assemble a lady's hat in the milliner's shop, bottles with strange looking liquids and herbs for the apothecary, etc. Also in each "shop" was a colonial- or revolutionary-inspired school activity. So we spent the day visiting each shop, playing at the activity set up and doing the educational activities which felt more like part of the play than the usual chore it would otherwise have been. This was one of my first unit studies without the assistance of a professionally prepared guide (Although I did use an old booklet guide to Colonial Williamsburg to add authenticity to my tour. There are also many Williamsburg related sites on the Internet to help.)
This study had several reincarnations over the next few years. It also gave grandparents a chance to be involved. They bought the Felicity doll and many accessories for Christmas and birthdays for several years. There were even tea party simulations – complete with a Felicity-style dress I made for Jenny one Christmas – which I used as a vehicle for teaching basic etiquette. In Section VII "Getting Started" of our textbook, Valerie offers some excellent ideas for incorporating biographies, timelines, maps, and other resources into social studies units.
Other areas of social studies offer many opportunities for unit studies as well. One of our favorite simulations evolved in this area. We were studying geological features and bodies of water, so we started creating a poster board map of the world. We made a set of cards asking us to identify peninsulas, mountain ranges, rivers, lakes, oceans etc. Then we thought, "Why not create a shipping game using the map as the game board?"
Thus "Alliance" was born!
The game became an informal unit study where several days a week for several months we would build various components of the game incorporating history, geography, current events, writing, research projects, crafts, math, science, and technology. After the map we researched the major shipping countries, ports, routes. We purchased our first World's Almanac to supply much of the information. A couple books on shipping from the library rounded out our research material. We cut out flags from a sticker resource book, attached them to toothpicks, and stuck them in lumps of clay -- blue for Jen and yellow for me -- to lay claim to our countries as we acquired them. Each turn we would draw a geography card which would ask us to locate cities, countries, mountain ranges, bodies of water on the map. If we got at least three correct, we could choose one of the countries in or around the features to add to our alliance. We'd carefully research the countries using the Almanac. If we revise the game again someday we'll probably go to a site like
As the years passed we added more involved statistics. Our score keeping became more involved as math skills increased. We developed Events Cards which incorporated current events to effect our shipping or countries' points. The game started simple when Jenny was about nine. By the time she turned 16 we were still enjoying it several times a year, still adding country and events cards to a far more sophisticated and polished game. We've even toyed with the idea of using her programming skills to create a computer version. Perhaps someday . . .
