Lesson 3: Thematic Springboards Part I: Subject Unit Study Ideas
3-4 Science/Technology
As fun as Alliance is, social studies weren't the only means to great unit studies. Many areas of science lend themselves well to unit studies.
A favorite theme developed as a result of a TV series Jen was attached to as a young teen. The show was based on space colonies, so it was only natural we should build a unit study around space exploration and colonization. By this time we were heavily into the Internet, so we did much of our research online. We decided the path which the study would take as we saw what information we were able to gather. A wealth of material from NASA-related sites gave us a strong technology component on spacecraft, astronauts, the Hubble telescope, and objects viewed by it for astronomy and physics studies. These sites, combined with excellent library books, gave us an in-depth knowledge of likely colony structures and their placement (Jen got to stump college meteorology students on the definition of LaGrange points – mentioned in the TV series and critical to colony placement – which was a great confidence builder! We still have a warm fuzzy fondness for LaGrange points which crop up in the most unlikely conversations.) We even toyed with the idea of building a clay and balsa wood model of a space colony. Jen created a graphic table comparing various features of the likeliest types of colonies. She ended up writing several essays and illustrated web pages on a site she created based on the TV series.
NOTE: Unit studies can tend to build up a heap of projects that get squirreled away in a closet somewhere. After a few years of this we got smart and tried to develop activities and do research which had a practical application whenever possible. Towards the end of our home education years, unit studies were no longer "unit studies". We instead replaced them with real world projects which often required lots of research. An example is when Jen toyed with the idea of turning her fly-tying hobby into an online business. While the business did not get off the ground, many hours were happily spent learning the basics of setting up a business and designing a commercial website.Valerie also voices warnings about too much project-oriented work from another standpoint in section XII of our main textbook.
