Unit Studies have been the most awesome way to educate that I have found. It takes less time, is funner, and more in-depth, and can cover many age levels of children. It is less confusing. I don't know, there are oodles of reasons, but I just really love doing them!

Last year for instance I did a unit study with my 1st grader and preschooler. What a blast!

First I looked through everything we had to do with dinosaurs in our house ( I was amazed at how much dino stuff I had).

I dug out all the books, toys, puppets, movies.

Then I went on line and found great sites for dinosaurs.

Then I purchased some things from ebay.

Personally I try to avoid the Public Library as much as possible. I am a home body, and not good at returning things on time.

We made fossils out of peanut butter dough, paper mache dinosaur eggs, dinosaur bone cookies. Sang dinosaur songs, watched movies (especially recommend the magic school bus movie) read both ficiton and non fiction, christian and secular. I made a list of spelling words from what we read. For math we used the mini plastic dinosaur toys from the dollar store as counters. We studied maps of the world and the globe with all the names of places listed in the books. Researched the interenet. Visited the states science museum at the end of the month. The children then made scrap books and wrote a journal. My son even recieved a dino excavating kit for his birthday; it took him 2 months to get through to the majority of the bones before he finally was so frustrated he took the rest of what was left of the brick and whipped it up against our jungle gym out back until it busted in a million pieces (maybe Dad should have helped him before the frustration kicked in).

We covered all the bases of school in one unit study! Wow. That just amazes me. The only thing left was phy-ed, and the music could have been better, but other than that: Science, social, bible, art, home-ec, english, reading, spelling, writing, and math where all integrated around dinosaurs.

Basically you can make anything revolve around your subject. Math and phy-ed are usually the exceptions. But young kids can do math questions pertaining to your subject (there are 22 dinosaurs in the forest. 3 migrated north, and 2 where eaten, how many are left?) or you can use "counters" in the shape of what you are studying. But that is about it, you may have to leave math out of the study and do it all on its own.

So why am I writing this for ebayers?

Because this (e-bay)  is the perfect place to plan a unit study.  For example: This month I went on ebay and searched for Winter Olympics, I found 4 books! That is incredible. It took me just a couple hours to search for a encyclopedia, a fiction, and two other non-fiction books about the subject. This weekend I will search teaching sites for Olympic projects to do, and games to play.  I may not get science, music,or math in there, but everything else I think will be more than covered. And I am soooo excited about it!!!

So if you are unit studying for the first time, type in how to plan a unit study in the ebay search, and look for a book on how to write them. Maybe you can find a real good deal on one. Once you are ready to look for the subjects of your unit study, type in your subject in the new search box, and go to town! For example you could type in stars or astronomey, you will find toys and manipulatives, books, games, pictures, everything you can imagine about almost every subject is usually on sale at ebay. Of coarse you could hit the library (if you don't mind kids tagging along, and you are really good at returning things on time).

Remember that when you are done using the things you accumulate for your unit study, you can sell them individually (or even better, as a "lot" or "set") on e-bay to another homeschooling family! You could also donate it to a homeschool co-op lending library co-op, or to your local library if they carry items for child care homes, or to a local school or preschool. Life should be all about helping each other out, and homeschooling can be very hard. Especially on families with a limited single income.

Blessings and happy ebaying!