How To Use Unit Studies on this blog

January 18th, 2009

Here is a brief post with our recommendations as to how to use the unit studies that appear each Monday on this blog.

If you don’t know what unit studies are, please read our past posts that explain their purpose.

It’s important to mention that unlike a standard homeschooling curriculum, you shouldn’t feel like you have to follow unit studies we post here as though they are a set of instructions. Instead, think of them as guidelines that add direction and perhaps some degree of structure to your homeschooling.

Also, I’ve made suggestions about how much time to spend on various activities. However, you might find that your child particularly enjoys a certain activity. In that case, it might be good to spend more time on it. Or he might be slower at some parts of the unit study than others. Instead of rushing him, encourage him to take his time. If your child feels pushed or rushed, he is likely to shut down and learning will stop.

Our unit studies are designed for teaching kids who have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). But even if your child hasn’t been officially diagnosed with ADD (and maybe he has a different learning challenge or is simply easily distracted), you’ll find that the activities in our unit studies will interest him much more than traditional school textbooks and worksheets.

You will notice that I consistently refer to your child as "he". I know that this isn’t politically correct, but I do it automatically since we homeschool my brother-in-law. Also, more boys have ADD than girls. And it’s not practical and readable to keep writing "he or she".

We do not indicate grade levels for activities. Instead, we propose easier and harder ways to do them. At times this means using different web addresses and exercises in order to increase the difficulty of the tasks.

All of the guidelines in this unit study are written to you as the homeschool teacher and aren’t meant to be read to your child. Rather, we encourage natural, parent-to-child conversation in a relaxed, informal tone, yet with a balanced degree of seriousness so that your child realizes that it’s time to focus on the activities.

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