My boys have a natural interest in many subjects, especially anything to do with History or Science. When we watch a documentary about a topic, they will ask endless questions about it. They want to try it, visit it, build it, test it, taste it. This is why Unit Studies work so well for us. We can go in depth in a subject, spend weeks on it and approach it from many different angles.
There are many good sources for Unit Studies on the web - free, cheap or otherwise. You can put together a Unit Study on your own and for some subjects, it can be easily done. Take Ancient Egypt for example. A quick trip to the library, a few web searches and a look through the Netflix documentary section will provide you with enough material for a six-week study. Some topics may be a little harder to put together.
I have found that I like to have an outline to go by, to break down the subject into topics and make sure that I cover everything. I started using Intellego Unit Studies at the very beginning and I've stuck with them. I stock up on them when CurrClick has them half off and they are a great deal. They break each subject into topics and provides links to all kinds of articles, activities, interactives and videos on the web for each topic. Some people have complained that they are too computer-intensive, but I don't use them that way. I pick the links I really like and supplement heavily with reading and other activities off the computer. I'll be outlining some of the resources I used for different Unit Studies on this site.
Ellen McHenry's Basement Workshop is another great resource for History and Science unit studies with lots of hands-on activities that are great for actives kids. She has board games, cartoons, art activities, and experiments - many of them free on her site.
For each History unit, I try to find a read-aloud that goes with what we're studying. Sometimes they are true historical fiction, like Crispin for the Middle Ages, and sometimes they just tie in, like the Percy Jackson series for Ancient Greece. You would be amazed at how much Greek Mythology my boys know from the Percy Jackson series!
Art projects are also fun to do. My boys don't want to color and they don't want to try to draw anything. But they love doing three-dimensional projects - building castles, making Egyptian death masks, playing with clay, making a stop-motion animation. I always check Art Projects for Kids and my local library for ideas.
My boys have always loved documentaries and I always plan a few in each unit. Netflix is a great source, as well as PBS, National Geographic, the History Channel, and the BBC. Many of them are available online or in your library. For some units, we can even tie in our Friday night movie night - The Mummy, anyone? The next week, we discuss what parts were historically correct and what we think was total fiction.
Last, but not least, look desperately for some kind of field trip to connect to the unit. I always keep an eye on all the museums in our city, as well as the Grandparents' cities, so I know when major exhibits are coming. There aren't many Ancient Egyptian sites in our area, but I knew when an exhibit was coming to our museum. So I skipped ahead a little in our otherwise chronological world history study so that we could get to the museum in time to see the exhibit.
Finally, to wrap it all up, we do a project. These have included essays, posters, stop-motion animation films, plays, PowerPoint presentations, and lapbooks. Sometimes, we summarize the major points of the whole unit and sometimes we just focus on one aspect of it. I like to keep changing it so that we get a wide variety of projects.
And there you have a Unity Study! I will be outlining some of our unit studies so you can see what resources we used and what we found the most fun.
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Yes, some boys just naturally love math. They beg for a log in to Khan Academy so they can study ahead and learn trigonometry in middle school. These are not my boys. My boys would rather bathe than do math. They do, however, love jumping up and down, tossing a ball around, stomping, and shooting at things. Here are some ideas to get you up and moving:
- Stomp around while skip counting.
- Get a big piece of cardboard; attach index cards with answers to whatever set of problems you are working on randomly all over the board; give your son a Nerf gun and start calling out problems.
- Get a small exercise trampoline and let your son skip count while bouncing.
- Toss a ball back and forth - you calling out a problem when you throw and your son calling out the answer as he throws it back.
Money is another great motivator for learning math. Given your son a check register and let him add up all the money he gets from allowance and extra chores and subtract what he spends. Let him make change whenever the opportunity arises. I have my sons write out a proposal for any large purchases they want to make (especially if they are going in together), showing where all the money is coming from, who is contributing what, what they are buying, and why I should let them buy it - also a good exercise in persuasive writing.
There are some great books that will give you all kinds of ideas for fun ways to actively learn math. The Family Math series is a great place to start. These books are full of fun games and activities to get you and your sons out of your seats and using math.
Another great series for math activities (and just about anything else you can think of) is the Brown Paper School series. These are great for kids who don't think they like math. They are written to the middle school crowd with great wit. They've been out of print for a while, but can be found at libraries and for as little as a penny on Amazon.
I was looking for some workbooks that would have something more interesting than your usual worksheet with 40 repetitious problems, the Basic, Not Boring series is great. Each book has a theme (sports, the beach, etc.) and each page is an activity with a story and illustrations. They focus more on problem solving than repetition.
If it's repetition that you need, there are several sites that have great games to let your kids drill their skills:
Fun-Kids Online Math
Mathopolis
Math Is Fun
I have found that the best way to keep interest up is to keep changing things up. First thing in the morning, my boys can take some "sit down and do math" time, but I keep it short. Drilling facts can be done anytime you have ten minutes to jump on the trampoline. Then, end the week with a great game of Monopoly to practice counting money and making change.