Homeschool Unit Studies

I just finished reading a great book about unit studies that has really got me excited about the prospect of using unit studies in our homeschool program. The book is titled "Everything You Need To Know About Homeschool Unit Studies" and I got it at the library. The book was great because it explained how to go about creating your own unit studies and even gave suggestions for many different topics that can be studied.

I'd heard a little about unit studies already, but this book really gave me the confidence to make the decision to use them for most of the school subjects. I will still need to use a set curriculum for language arts and math, but I can incoporate all other subjects (like history, science, art, music, social science, geography) into any unit study I do.

The whole idea of a unit study is to learn about a topic comprehensively, but in a fun and interesting way. So, instead of just reading a textbook about, say, the civil war and trying to memorize dates and facts, you could read period literature and do activities that really help bring to life what you are learning and cement it in your mind.

We are currently doing a unit study on the human body. Most of it I created myself by just looking online for ideas. We started with the 5 senses. My great friend and fellow homeschooler, Malinda, gave me two books on the senses and we used these for our read aloud time and then I found some ideas online for activities and crafts that help reinforce what we learned in the books about each sense. We are now moving on to the rest of the body and for this I have a Magic School Bus Journey Into The Human Body Science Kit. This set has 10 experiments related to the body that we will do and then we can write our findings in the included journal. Cameron loves doing anything that seems like an "experiment" so he has been having lots of fun with this unit study. And I love knowing that he will remember most of what he learns because it was interesting and relevant to him.

My problem now is trying to decide what unit study to do next. I get so excited when I think about all the fun things we will be learning that I just want to do it all right now! Oh well, I guess I'll just have to take it one step (or unit study) at a time. I am thinking about a study of winter animals. Any thoughts?