Add Wonder to Your Homeschool With Unit Studies

Pam Barnhill [00:00:01]:
Are you ready for homeschooling to feel joyful again? Do you long for support as you learn alongside your kids? Welcome to Homeschool Better Together, a podcast about building a homeschool experience that works for your family. I’m Pam Barnhill, and it’s time to step out of the overwhelm and into the wonder. Let’s do this. Hey there, and welcome to today’s episode of the podcast. I am joined by our member success manager, miss Laney Homan. Laney, how are you doing today?

Laney Homan [00:00:40]:
I’m doing really well today. How are you, Pam?

Pam Barnhill [00:00:43]:
I am doing great. So much fun to get to chat with you about unit studies, which is kind of one of my favorite things that harkens all the way back to my earliest days of homeschooling and brings back all of those fond memories because that’s where my kids and I started out and hung out for a very, very long time in our homeschool journey. And I think you’re hanging out there longer than I ever did, And I’m kinda proud of you for it.

Laney Homan [00:01:09]:
Yeah. And I think, like, the funniest part about it is is that and I really haven’t considered what we’re doing unit studies, but when I really think about, like, how we’re doing school these days, it does fall under that category. Yeah. It was just a natural shift in how we were approaching learning using the explorations inside membership, and it just built from there. And, like I said, I never really considered, like, oh, we’re switching approaches or now we’re using unit studies. And as we have begun to kind of discuss the concept of unit studies and different homeschool philosophies and things, I was like, well, that actually kind of does mesh pretty well with how we’re, you know, how we’re schooling these days.

Pam Barnhill [00:01:55]:
I love it. Okay. Okay. So remind everybody how many kids you have in total, but also you’re only doing this with some of your kids because half of your kids have graduated. Half of your kids have graduated. Hallelujah.

Laney Homan [00:02:11]:
Yes. I have 8 kids and I’m currently homeschooling the youngest 4. The older 4 are out of my homeschool and what they will be going into this school year. We have a bunch of summer birthdays, but I have a 14 year old, a 12 year old, an 11 year old, and a 9 year old. We’ve been using the explorations for years, and we’re just gonna continue with it. So the 14 year old will be doing he’ll be doing them with us, but his school will look a little bit different as he’s rolling into high school. It won’t be, you know, there will be some differentiation there for his courses, but, he’ll still be participating at the table with us and doing the same types of activities that we’re doing.

Pam Barnhill [00:02:56]:
Okay. Yeah. And we’ll break that down a little bit further for people because the question is going to be, how do you make this work when you have older kids? And, and the answer to that is it’s gonna vary from family to family, but, you know, there are things you can do and we’ll talk about them as we get a little bit further in. I really wanted to talk today about first let’s start with what is a unit study. So what do you think a unit study is, Laney? I just wanna get your opinion.

Laney Homan [00:03:25]:
Well, so it’s interesting. Like I because I just got through saying, like, I never really considered what we’re doing unit studies, but I think the idea that you’re just studying a topic and then you’re looking at different aspects of that topic. In the past, I’ve really considered a unit study something that was more contrived in a way that was, like, kind of stretching, making connections. So if you were studying about space, then you were going to be, you know, trying to make your language arts lessons about

Pam Barnhill [00:04:01]:
You’re gonna write a story about a voyage to space or yeah, or you were going to oh, my favorites I’m being sarcastic here. We’re always the little math lessons about, like, you know, count the planets or add the planets or stuff like that. And Right. We have some of that in our preschool, in our busy boxes. But for older kids, we’re not trying to, like I’m not fond of the unit studies where the we’re like, we’re gonna do math now and we’re gonna, like, multiply rocket ships or something.

Laney Homan [00:04:32]:
Right. Well, I mean and that that’s the thing. Like, I’ve always kind of thought is unit studies is more of like a contrived connection between subjects

Pam Barnhill [00:04:42]:
Mhmm.

Laney Homan [00:04:43]:
Where you’re trying to make everything match a particular subject. But I guess for me, whenever we started doing the explorations, which they are themed morning time plans is what they are. So in our membership, you get access to the explorations, and every month, there’s a different theme. And it might be baseball 1 month and ships and sailing another month and apples another month. Like, you have really, in some ways, what seems like to be a random theme. And then the exploration has been the idea that we explore the truth, goodness, and beauty around this topic. It hasn’t necessarily included a whole lot of language arts or specific science lessons and other content subjects, but you’re just taking a topic and you’re, you know, learning beautiful poetry and music, and there are connections to be made. But what I discovered is we were using the explorations was we were reading beautiful books and we were exploring the poetry and the music and the nature study.

Laney Homan [00:05:54]:
But as we were learning about people and events and places and sometimes even scientific discoveries and topics, I was like, we are covering all of these subjects around this central theme. Yeah. And I guess, ultimately, that would kind of be the definition of a unit study, but I think the reason I didn’t ever pinpoint it as a unit study was because there was nothing contrived about it. It was just a very natural outworking of what topic we were studying. So it for example, when we did the apples exploration, we read a story about Johnny Appleseed, and then we talked about, like, who he was as a person and what he did in history. We talked about the events surrounding his life, and though that was a very natural connection out of learning about apples. It wasn’t some sort of, like, random assignment. You know? And our math lessons were not about counting apples, and we wouldn’t have like, I didn’t have to reach for it.

Laney Homan [00:07:06]:
It was just and as we started learning that way, my kids began to make so many more connections across subject areas than they had whenever we had used other types of curriculum, like, just different methodology. Prior to this, we had really stuck with having a history, like, a chronological history be the backbone of our homeschool, different curriculums that we had used, different books. And I felt like, I remember when my kids were my older kids were younger, and I’m just trying to, like, match up everything with their history timeline so hard. Yeah. I was like, oh, we can’t read that book now because it goes in this time period. And and then my kids were missing a great book that was age appropriate because it didn’t really line up with history studies, and I was trying so hard to make everything match. And what I found was that that that’s kind of what curriculum was pushing, was to kinda keep everything, like, oh, your read alouds and your your readers and all of these things should all be tied to, you know, the same topics in history and everything. When I started to break away from that with the explorations, it was totally accidental, first of all.

Laney Homan [00:08:25]:
We just started using the explorations as kind of a supplement, and then they just eclipsed everything else we were doing because they were fabulous. And here we are years later, and we’re still using them. So it was just interesting to me because my view of a unit study and how these contrived connections were made and something that I had kind of, like, dismissed is, like, that’s not a methodology I’m interested in. So I didn’t really focus there, especially when I was a beginning homeschooler. But I found myself kind of falling into the same trap that I was trying to avoid when I decided to avoid unit studies because then I got really married to this timeline. This idea that we needed to be studying the the history and subjects in this chronological order. And when we broke away from that, all of a sudden, my kids were it was like their little brains just had light bulbs going off all over the place, and they were making connections between ideas and historical events and scientific discoveries. And this happened it, like, it to be frank, it didn’t happen with my older kids when we were using that different type of methodology.

Laney Homan [00:09:46]:
But with the with my younger set of kids as we started using this, I began to see them having a better understanding of the history timeline and things like that. And let let me be clear, I’m not a timeline mama. Like, I’ve tried, failed at having a successful timeline. So they say that’s how you’re supposed to keep all these historical events, you know, in their proper places and give your kids these little pegs to hang things on. As many times as I tried that as we were studying history through the years, we just never successfully continued it, and my kids weren’t using it the way that it was intended and they weren’t making the connections. However, when we started doing the explorations, you know, 1 month, we’re studying about flying machines, well, all of a sudden, my kids just have this maybe they don’t have the exact date in their mind, but they know something about the Wright brothers, and they know that they designed, like, the first engine powered plane. And then when they’re studying the next topic and somebody comes up, they start comparing it to, like, well, when did this happen compared to when the Wright brothers were there? Like, they’re are they’re automatically

Pam Barnhill [00:11:01]:
that relative timeline even if they’re not doing that exact date timeline. Exactly.

Laney Homan [00:11:06]:
And so now there is, like, the there are these hinge points and they’re not even like the typical, like, you know, dates that you would necessarily think of as key dates in history, but just things that were important to them.

Pam Barnhill [00:11:20]:
Like Yeah.

Laney Homan [00:11:21]:
Was this before cars were invented, or is this after car like, they they start to make these connections about the world and then about subjects, and it’s just been a delight to see that.

Pam Barnhill [00:11:33]:
So my homeschool journey started out with unit studies. I was very drawn to unit studies in the beginning and probably did them for the first three years of our homeschooling journey. Kind of, I we definitely did them in preschool and then in kindergarten and moving into 1st grade. And then I got pulled into that same kind of 4 year history cycle structure that you’re talking about. And let me just say that you’re always going to have some way to organize content. And and unit studies are a way to organize content, the 4 year history cycle. And if you read like the well trained mind, she lays out a 4 year history cycle. And she also has kind of a 4 year science cycle that goes with the same, like, lines everything up.

Laney Homan [00:12:21]:
Standing in the building blocks of science and, like, what Yeah. What would be, like, a logical way to build upon concepts. But again, it’s this structure that someone has created. Right. Tell you what order to study things.

Pam Barnhill [00:12:36]:
Yeah. Yeah. And even like a, you know, a Charlotte Mason curriculum, which the Charlotte Mason people, like, completely askew unit studies. Like, they’re not down with them at all. They organize like an Ambleside. It organizes things in a specific manner. It has a a certain way that it it lays out kind of this path of learning. Now I will say that unit studies, they tend to be shorter blocks.

Pam Barnhill [00:12:59]:
So you say like with our Wonder Studies, which is our Explorations and our Voyages that we’re adding this fall, we’re doing a topic a month. And and we’ll talk a little bit later about why we think that’s a great idea, but it it’s just another way to organize content. Some content is organized over the course of a 12 year study. Other con content is organized in the course of a month. You know, but it’s just another way to organize content. And so we’re always as human beings who are seeking order, because most of us are, we’re gonna try to find a way to organize the content. And this just may be one that works for you. You know? Sometimes it works for some people, sometimes it doesn’t.

Laney Homan [00:13:41]:
Well, and I think my biggest fear about unit studies initially was, like, that it wouldn’t when you have another methodology of homeschool that organizes topics differently, you have a little bit maybe a little bit more of a thought that you would cover things systematically so that you’re going to not miss things.

Pam Barnhill [00:14:02]:
Uh-huh. There are gonna be no gaps. Right?

Laney Homan [00:14:05]:
Right. Exactly. And we I mean, we could have a whole podcast on that. I know we talk about it a lot. Like, homeschool it. You’re gonna have gaps. Gaps are good. We talk about this, but I think there is a sense where that is something that was kind of a hang up in my brain, and I I love this.

Laney Homan [00:14:22]:
Like, I was telling Pam yesterday, like, sometimes my brain just has like this own its own epiphany of like a timeline of things that have happened in my life, but as my 14 year old, this was probably, it might have been last year, could’ve been the year before, but I started to choose him a science curriculum. I was like, we haven’t done like I said, we’ve been using these explorations as the primary resource for our school for a number of years now. And so for a bulk of his elementary years, we were not using a specific science curriculum. And as he was approaching the age to move into high school, so we get into junior high, and I started thinking about the fact that I wanted him to have a little bit more structured science curriculum to better prepare him for high school science. And I was like, well, he hasn’t really had any formal science, so where am I gonna start and what I’m gonna do? And at first, I went to him and we talked about what he might be interested in studying, but then I started looking at science curriculum and trying to figure out, like, which would be the best one to start with. And I started going, like, well, he, oh, we we have covered that, and, oh, well, we have covered that too, and, oh, well, maybe there really aren’t as many holes in what we’ve been doing as I thought there were even though I had never pulled out a formal science curriculum in his elementary years And I recognized that just by using the explorations without any intention on my part, we had covered all of these major areas of science. And I was like, yeah. I feel like he’s got a good foundation and he can just choose which one he wants to go into.

Laney Homan [00:16:02]:
And so we did. We we gave him a more specific science curriculum to use to kind of build him and ready him for high school science, but it was which is one of those moments for me where I’m like, this method is proving itself to me over and over again. I’ve had several moments where I’m like, oh, this is actually preparing them better than I would have planned for it to prepare them. I was just kind of using it, and it felt like it was working and seemed great. But then as I’m moving them and transitioning them into higher levels of schooling, I’m like, no. This has been a really solid foundation for them.

Pam Barnhill [00:16:39]:
I love it. I love it so much. Okay. So other things. So we’ve talked about, you know, usually there’s a theme when you have unit studies as a way to organize the material, that they’re interdisciplinary, that you’re going to be covering multiple subjects within the unit study. Not all subjects though. So like a lot of times, well, I mean, it really does depend on the unit study, but this is where I feel like some unit studies are weak is when they’re trying to cover every single subject in the unit study. When really I, in my opinion, most of the time, they’re personally better for content area subjects.

Pam Barnhill [00:17:19]:
Things like science, history, some literature, stuff like that.

Laney Homan [00:17:23]:
Yeah. I would agree with that. Yeah. So we have the new voyages that we’re riding and the idea I’ve I’ve been telling people for a couple of years now, like, yes, I use the exploration, so that’s pretty much all we do for our homeschool and it’s fabulous. Well, I realized I’m like, I’ve been homeschooling for 20 years, and I do the explorations as written, but I also have the experience to be able to, like, pick up a book and be like, I know the key places to ask my kids questions sometimes. I know, like, I have already studied this chronological history. I have already gone through these other things with my kids. So I have a good sense of, like, the key people and events and things that I want to draw out or scientific concepts that I want to pull out of these explorations that become a very natural part of our school day.

Pam Barnhill [00:18:20]:
And that’s why, I mean, I will tell you, and if you don’t know this already, and I think you probably do, you were very much the inspiration. You and a few other members of the wonder studies membership were very much the inspiration for the thing that became voyages because we saw you doing this. We saw some of our other members doing this, and we’re like, this is really cool. This is such a great way to learn. And we knew that there were goodness more than a small handful of you guys who were turning this into the, almost the entirety of their content based homeschool for their elementary up into middle school kids. And we’re like, how could we help more people to do this and feel like they’re kind of checking the right boxes? You know? And it was by using you and some of our other members as an inspiration that were like, what’s going on in Laney’s brain that she’s pulling out?

Laney Homan [00:19:19]:
That’s a scary place to be,

Pam Barnhill [00:19:22]:
but what’s going on in her brain as she’s pulling out these things. And then we started doing that and creating the voyages to do for the mom who’s not as comfortable and confident the same kinds of things that you were doing as you looked at these explorations. So we we just added on the voyages, which are this extra layer that moms could use where we’ve done the work for them.

Laney Homan [00:19:45]:
That’s what I was gonna say is that, like, really what writing the voyages became was me going through the content and looking at it and saying, okay, how would I teach this to my kids? And then showing that piece to another mom who maybe needed a little bit of help or wanted something that was a little bit more structured and open and go, And I I think what we’ve developed is something that’s very open and go. It’s a little bit unique in the way that one of the things that was very important was to not have these contrived cross disciplinary connections. So, for example, when I began writing The Christmas Carol Voyages so we have an exploration coming up this this next December called it’s about Charles Dickens’ book, The Christmas Carol, and it is a fabulous exploration. And we were you know, I was thinking about, like, how would we write a voyage about this, and what what are the aspects that I would pull out of this for my kids? Well, there’s some things that very naturally, like, the Victorian, you know, time period is that’s just perfect for studying Charles Dickens. And there then also just like history, who is Charles Dickens? What else has he written? What’s he famous for? You know, there are lots of language arts connections there. I mean, we’re studying essentially a novel. We we use a picture book version of it, but, you know, then I was like, well, what would we study for science out of this? And I was like, well, I just am not seeing anything that would naturally lead itself to these lessons. Now that’s not to say somebody else wouldn’t pick it up and find something that they felt was very natural, but I didn’t want to have to feel like I was reaching for a topic.

Laney Homan [00:21:31]:
So instead of try like, doing structured science lessons, I was like, this would be a really great opportunity to talk about stewardship, to talk about charity, like, natural topics that would come out of conversation from reading the book, A Christmas Carol, and then, you know, how kind of putting a little bit of extension on that. So I think that was one of the things that separates the voyages from your traditional unit study, which is not, like, maybe we’ll guarantee you, like, you’re gonna have science and you’re gonna have history and you’re gonna have, like, you’re gonna have these specific subjects. We’ve tried to write something that is very natural to the topics that flow out of whatever our theme was.

Pam Barnhill [00:22:18]:
Mhmm.

Laney Homan [00:22:18]:
And then, again, kind of going back to that science thing where I was talking earlier about my son having, like, well, oh, he covered all this stuff. If you stick with it and trust that process over a period of time, you know, you’re doing that as your main curriculum for a year, you’re covering so much more than what you might think you were covering if you just looked at the individual topics. And so I it has just been working, and I just because it’s working so well, I just can’t let it go.

Pam Barnhill [00:22:48]:
Yeah. I was gonna say, you know, like, oh, maybe there’s no particular science in that one month because quite frankly, our choices were like birds you eat or the holidays or the paranormal, and we weren’t going there. So, you know, it was just much better to substitute the stewardship until you don’t necessarily get a a scientific topic for that particular month. But over the course of the year, you do get many scientific topics. Well, I

Laney Homan [00:23:20]:
mean, you know, we’re gonna be studying space. We’re gonna be studying snow and ice. We’re gonna be studying other, like those are going to lend themselves very heavily to science topics and then maybe they’re a little lighter on language arts, but again the you know, the Christmas Carol voyage is gonna be very heavy on language arts.

Pam Barnhill [00:23:39]:
Yeah.

Laney Homan [00:23:39]:
We’ve got our geography explorations. Those are fantastic for, you know, diving even deeper on the people and events of a culture, doing map work, and finding, you know, places and actually really diving into geography, so there are just so many topics and subjects that come, well, there’s so many subjects that come out of the topics that are the main topic for the month.

Pam Barnhill [00:24:05]:
And you just look at it over the course of a year. And I guess, okay, so the last kind of component of unit studies that I wanted to talk about before we start talking about some of the benefits is a lot of times unit studies have hands on activities and they don’t have to. So if you’re not a crafty mom, just because somebody says the word unit study, some do, and and I’m gonna, you know, just encourage you if you are going to be purchasing a unit study to look at it and see like, is this, is this something that the real me, not the aspirational me, is willing to do? So am I willing to build the pyramid out of sugar cubes or or some, you know, something like that? But not not all unit studies do have a heavy hands on focus. They don’t have to. And then there are some of them out there that are kind of the opposite of that, where it seems like you get the unit study and it’s all filling in worksheets. Right.

Laney Homan [00:25:04]:
Well and I think what we’ve created is, it’s a very good mix of things. So, you know, in the Apple’s Voyage, we’re gonna have you actually get a flower specimen and dissect that with your kids so that they can see it and draw it and, like, put their hands on that. But that’s the kind of hands on activity we’re talking about more than, you know, we’re not going to, like, make a paper orchard diorama. Right. We’re not gonna use crepe paper to make apple blossoms. Like, now and I will say, like, I’m not totally knocking that because in the explorations, you will if you’re pairing the voyages with the exploration, you’re going to be more likely to find, like, your art activities and some of the hands on type activities, especially, you know, Pam mentioned earlier, like, our little explorers does contain some of those more hands on activities, and they’re they’re purposeful. They’re building fine motor skills. They’re not just arbitrary things to assign, but we try to include art activities for kids.

Pam Barnhill [00:26:10]:
Well, let’s talk a little bit about the difference between we’ve got more to talk about unit studies, but we’re kind of naturally go in here at this point. So let’s talk about wonder studies as a whole and the 3 different components of wonder studies. So first we start with our little explorers and this is our early education program. And we call it an early education program because we have some families whose oldest child is maybe 6 years old, maybe even going into a young 7 year old and that’s their oldest. And then they’ve got a couple of younger kids after that. And they really do find that doing a little bit of reading like phonics and a little bit of math and some handwriting with that oldest child and then doing the little explorers with all their kids together is more than enough. And that’s, yeah, that’s where you’re going to have really those early education appropriate activities. You’re going to have some of those more craftier things that Laney was talking about to help build those fine motor skills and, you know, make those things that the kids like to to make.

Pam Barnhill [00:27:14]:
I I will say they lean more process art than they do product

Laney Homan [00:27:18]:
art. And they’re usually like alphabet and number activities in there for those younger ages as well for our little explorers.

Pam Barnhill [00:27:26]:
Yeah. And so then the next component is the explorations. And those, I would say, have the widest age range of any of the sets, because these are the ones that focus largely on the arts. These were our more traditional morning time plan kinds of things that we had designed for families to do together. So in the Apple’s exploration, we’re we’re looking at paintings by Cezanne and we’re studying art and music and those kinds of topics as well.

Laney Homan [00:27:59]:
Yeah. Well, I mean, all of our explorations cover art, picture study, nature study, poetry. Poetry. They they all contain the same subjects. It’s just all each month, it’s on a different theme. Those haven’t changed, we still have that kind of that artistic focus, the poetry focus, the nature study, all of that is still built into the exploration. The third component would be the voyages, which we have we’re adding and that is going to be your content subjects. They’re they are designed to take that same theme that the exploration is that you’ve already been studying, you know, the truth, goodness, and beauty and artsy things with that subject, And then we are actually layering on.

Laney Homan [00:28:51]:
Now you can actually cover your content subjects as well. You’ve got your history. You’ve got your science. You’ve got

Pam Barnhill [00:28:58]:
Geography, language arts. Yeah.

Laney Homan [00:29:01]:
You know, a couple probably a couple of math topics. Like, there are some things that are coming up very naturally as we are creating these, but here’s the beautiful thing, is that, like, as we were began riding the voyages, they are standalone on their own, like, you do not have to do the exploration in order to get wonderful benefit from the voyage. So they can be used independently of the voyage or I mean of the exploration or they can be used in conjunction with the exploration, which may so it just it makes it very interchangeable that way, and I think it’s fantastic.

Pam Barnhill [00:29:42]:
Yeah. So you could use one part of this. You could use 2 parts of this, or if you have just this wide age range in your family, that we have some families who would use all three parts of this. And so, you know, and it all works together very, very well. I just wanna go back to the explorations and the art activities that are in there. I will say that the vast majority, I’m not gonna say like 100% all, because I have not seen every single art activity in every single exploration that’s coming out this year. You know, we have a curriculum editor for that, but they are like art activities. It’s not toilet paper roll craft activities.

Pam Barnhill [00:30:22]:
Yes.

Laney Homan [00:30:23]:
They are. They they’re usually watercolor or painting. There’s like some drawing. There’ll be some how to draw videos, those kinds of things, but there are some there are some really lovely art activities in there. I feel like my kids are doing art not crafting whenever we are doing the projects from the explorations.

Pam Barnhill [00:30:45]:
Yeah. Okay. So let’s talk about the elephant in the room right now. And this is this idea that, okay, what do you mean? I have this 2nd grader and I have this 7th grader and everybody is gonna be able to learn together using the same stuff. How does that work?

Laney Homan [00:31:02]:
Well, we all come to the table together and we go through our explorations and we’ll, you know, we do kind of what has been the equivalent of the voyages, and that’s what we’ll be doing this coming year. And then after we finish up our table time, everybody in my home school has, like, an individual list of things that they have to do. It’s usually a very short list because we’ve covered so much material in our morning time with these other resources, but they’re all gonna do math on their own. My littlest kids are going to be doing their phonics lessons, they’re gonna learn to read, they’re gonna do handwriting, they have to learn letter formation when they’re young. And then there’s just kind of a natural transition, like, after my kids are fluent readers, after they have solid letter formation, then I will usually start assigning them more writing and composition kind of things. They’re narrating constantly at the table. We have a lot of oral narration going on with the topic.

Pam Barnhill [00:32:02]:
Yeah. I would see, like, thinking about my kids and what we’ve done in the past coming together and doing the morning time like you talked about. And then for the older kids, you know, as they reached like an an 11 year old range probably, I would probably pull in like an IEW or something composition program. So we’ve been writing all along in the language arts portion of the voyages because there is some copy work and there is some writing in there, And then I would probably add that curriculum. Now I wouldn’t necessarily try to get through one of their programs in a year that I would, you know, if I’m going to pair it with the language arts that we’re doing in the voyages, I would probably stretch it out over a year and a half or 2 years and kind of go back and forth between the 2. So we are getting a little more of that formal composition along with the, I guess you would say, less formal activities that are in the voyages. And we’ve worked in those differentiating levels of instruction in the voyages by including the keeping book and encouraging older students to use the keeping book and write some things down in there. So this is kind of like a journal of your learning that you’re going to be keeping, where you’re keeping some diagrams, where you’re doing some writing, even keeping a timeline, Laney’s so happy.

Pam Barnhill [00:33:27]:
Yeah. We thought a history timeline would be helpful. And so these activities are completely optional. You don’t have to assign them to your older students, but they are a way for your older students to add more depth and get more out of the assignments than what your 6 year old would be doing. And so there are a number of ways we’ve done that. And then, of course, we’re gonna add on that especially that composition program, that math program. And then hopefully, your child is doing a ton of either free reading or listening to audiobooks on their own.

Laney Homan [00:33:57]:
Yeah. It just kind of makes a slow transition. So, yeah, for my littler kids, they’re gonna be doing that phonics, that letter formation, and math and then again the older kids are going to be reading, they’re going to they’re going to have more composition assignments and I I will say very much like Pam, I have used IEW for years, but some people choose to just use narration Yeah. As their composition. Dawn Garrett has used only narration throughout her home school for her kids, and she you know, she’s graduating kids, and she’s down to her last one and she never used a formal writing curriculum, they just they did narration. So you could certainly get plenty of narration activities out of The Voyages.

Pam Barnhill [00:34:43]:
And we’ve we’ve included some in there, you know, some narration prompts and and different things like that. And when your older kids, you know, could be doing a written narration.

Laney Homan [00:34:52]:
Yeah. And so your younger kid might be doing an oral narration at the table and participating in the discussion, but then when they leave the table, your older child might go and do a written narration of a topic that you’ve been discussing or maybe even they have to, like, read read something else to get a little more information and be able to expand upon it, but there are certainly ways to include them in that learning and to make the levels, you know, different for the different age ranges and the different age ranges and the different capabilities for their academic.

Pam Barnhill [00:35:23]:
And I think, you know, when you’re differentiating instruction, you’re you’re going to either give the older child slightly more to do. You’re going to require a different kind of output. So instead of doing something orally, they may do something written, or you’re going to require that their output be longer and more detailed. So those are three ways that you can can differentiate instruction. And those are just the things that you keep in mind as you’re thinking about how can I do the same thing with a 7 year old and a 7th grader is is you’re gonna be working on those 3 particular things? And and that’s just the kind of a easy check for you to think this is, this is how I can do it and make it work for the older child and make it be at their level.

Laney Homan [00:36:07]:
Well, and I know even in the Voyages, we’ve tried to include, like, even some discussion prompts where the thought process would be a little bit deeper for an older child. So I I just remember very specifically in The Christmas Carol Voyage, like, one of the discussion prompts is, like, what would a feast be like in Victorian England? That’s something after reading the book that a young child could start to give you some answers about different types of food they eat or how they might celebrate. Well, for the older children, we ask the question, like, how would a feast during the Victorian period differ for poor people versus wealthy people? There’s a little bit of a deeper thought process that goes into that, and they have to consider some questions that they maybe would have considered if they were just thinking about like what does a feast look like?

Pam Barnhill [00:36:58]:
Right.

Laney Homan [00:36:58]:
So we do try to kind of give, you know, through a number of methods, give your older children opportunities to engage with the material at a higher level.

Pam Barnhill [00:37:09]:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So before we go, let’s just touch what is some of the biggest benefits that you have seen from teaching your kids this way? Because I wanna talk about, and, and, you know, obviously we love our wonder studies, but any kind of unit study out there, what is the benefit of using a unit study for your family?

Laney Homan [00:37:29]:
My favorite aspect has been seeing the kids make their own connections across curriculum. They, like, across subject matter, they begin to see how the world interacts together, you know, I just I love the fact that when they when they start to see one aspect of something and then that will pop up again in another study on a different topic, that they are starting to draw those connections. So, I got to see a beautiful example of this this past week because our family spent a week just going to a bunch of museums kind of locally and just really exploring some stuff that the kids had not done before and, I mean, one was a space museum, one was a, like, world history, world treasures museum, but I loved the fact that, like, things that they had touched on in school last year, they were starting to draw the connections between the, like, the content, and so my oldest that was with well, my not my oldest that was with us, but, you know, one of my children had learned about the atomic bomb last year and the kind of the end of World War 2 and then in the museum, he was able to, like, start to recognize connections between that and the cold war and the space race and the relationships between countries that he really like, he was seeing these things in a museum or pieces of the Berlin Wall in the museum, but he began to, like, start to go back to, oh, I I see why this was a problem, like, I remember from talking about this in this particular subject that we were looking at, you know, this particular topic that we discussed, they began to make all those connections on their own, and I think that was so much more powerful than me just laying everything out for them. And that that has just been my favorite part of all of it is just seeing them. You’ve talked

Pam Barnhill [00:39:35]:
about that a number of times before. I would have to say that my favorite part, I mean, other than just the fact that it’s such an efficient way to homeschool Instead of having you know, I love my efficiency. Instead of having everybody off with their separate little book and their separate little subject is just the conversations and the relationship that comes from the fact that we are all sitting there studying the same topic. And, you know, one kid pops up with this comment, another kid builds on it with something else, and another kid talks about something else and, like, the conversation’s just going back and forth. And we’re just enjoying not only the topic we’re studying, but we’re joy we’re enjoying each other’s company, and we’re enjoying that process of learning together. And me as mom, I get to learn so much stuff that I didn’t know right along with them. So I think that’s my studies at my home school.

Laney Homan [00:40:37]:
Yeah. I think I think so. I remember when my older 2 were younger, I found it very difficult to bring them all together. It does take a level of perseverance sometimes. And, you know, that this okay.

Pam Barnhill [00:40:51]:
This is what I say because some people tell me this. They’re like, it’s hard. It’s hard to have all your kids together. And I get it some days. It’s so hard at my house. I’m like, okay, leave. We’re done. You know, like, okay, you, you wore me down.

Pam Barnhill [00:41:03]:
Just go. But you got to pick your hard because, you know, you can either have 4 kids, 4 or 5 kids over here, and you’re tracking multiple levels and multiple subjects and all the things that all the people are doing and trying to keep up with everybody. That’s hard. Or you’ve got, I’m gonna take some time over here and teach everybody how to behave in a group. That’s hard. Yes. Pick your hard. Well, I

Laney Homan [00:41:28]:
just think it’s important to acknowledge. Like, there,

Pam Barnhill [00:41:31]:
you

Laney Homan [00:41:31]:
know, there is that aspect. It’s not all sunshine and roses Never.

Pam Barnhill [00:41:35]:
But nothing in homeschooling is. Right. No.

Laney Homan [00:41:37]:
And that

Pam Barnhill [00:41:37]:
that’s so true. But this is a way so here’s

Laney Homan [00:41:38]:
the difference between, like, when I finally got over my stubborn self and quit keeping everybody separate because that was so hard and pulled them all together. Over a period of time they learn the expectations and then the hard dissipates a little, you’re still gonna have hard days, but it’s not the constancy. Whereas when you have all of these different levels and all these different things that you’re teaching and are stacked in, that is like the recipe for burnout because

Pam Barnhill [00:42:11]:
that part of it goes away. Yes.

Laney Homan [00:42:14]:
Right. So I I do think that there is that that idea of, you know, persevering, bringing your kids together, some days calling it quits because it needs to happen. But, you know, continuing with that consistency, continuing to just come together, and when you do it around something like a unit study, there’s really a lot of fun involved and Yeah. Usually the kids will start to kinda lose their attitudes about stuff because they really like to have fun. And when they start to kind of recognize, like, oh, this is, you know, this is enjoyable or I just learned this really cool fact, it does bring them together and it gives them a place where they can connect with one another.

Pam Barnhill [00:43:03]:
I love it. Okay. So we’re not we’re not sugarcoating this. We are telling you. Just like anything else in homeschooling, the good stuff takes a little bit of work. But, Laney, thank you so much for coming on today and just talking about unit studies in general and why we think that it’s a great way to learn. And then also sharing with us about the wonder studies and the wonder studies membership is open, and we have all of our explorations for 2024, 2025 in there right now. And we are adding voyages as fast as we can, And we would just love to have you join us.

Laney Homan [00:43:39]:
Yeah. And I will be there inside, help helping to hold your hand and lead you through whatever questions you have.

Pam Barnhill [00:43:47]:
Oh, that’s true. Let me yeah. I’m just gonna end with this. When you join, one of the options you get is to schedule a 15 minute call with Laney, and it is invaluable. She will not only show you where everything is, but she’s going to ask you about your situation. Like, how old are your kids? What are your goals? You know, what are you trying to do? And then she’s going to point you in the right direction and give you some basic guidelines for getting started, and you just can’t beat that. So homeschooling mentorship with a personal touch. So thank you for doing that, Laney, and thanks for coming on.

Laney Homan [00:44:21]:
Thanks for having me.

Pam Barnhill [00:44:24]:
That’s our show for today. Be sure to follow, subscribe, and leave a review so you never miss out on the wonder of homeschooling better together. To stay connected and learn even more about the Homeschooling Better Together resources and to join our free community, visit hsbtpodcast.com. Until next week, keep stepping out of the overwhelm and into the wonder.