As a supplement to our language arts and math last semester, we did an ocean unit study with my then 2, 4 and 6 year olds this last semester. With our kids’ bout with Hand Foot and Mouth, a broken leg, and the pandemic, it was not quite the semester we had envisioned. At first, I was thinking we’d need to add quite a few more hands on projects to the study and we did add some. But when the chaos ensued, I was grateful for the simplicity and familiar pace of our oceans study each week. And we ended up with a great lapbook to review at the end and commemorate our progress and fun.
We used the Oceans study by Amanda Bennett from unitstudy.com. It comes in PDF form with a companion lap book file and is designed to be completed in a month: 4 weeks with 4 days of study each and one day of weekly review. But as with our Dinosaur Unit Study, I chose to separate the study out to complete one “day” per week and go to the study a couple of times a week with the goal to complete it in 16 weeks by the end of the semester. With my young children it would be far too much work to expect them to complete a full day out of the study each school day along with our reading, math, and bible work we already do each day. It is designed to be more of a full curriculum covering Science, History, Reading, Writing and Bible. For anyone with not married to the other work they are doing or with older children, it would be great to complete with youngers as designed though without the other curricula.
Another awesome component is that the study has a parallel track for older years so that we can circle back when we are ready for more advanced study too! Even still my kindergartener learned about the ocean floor, beach warning signs, ocean navigators, countless interesting sea creatures, and explorers from Noah to Captain James Cook (and would have finished with Picard and Cousteau if we had not chosen to finish early).
One thing that made this study a bit unique was that it referred to various websites for additional reading, illustrations and videos. At first I was yearning for library books and less screen time. But with the chaotic semester it probably wound up being easier to manage.
Life got wild with a domino effect sort of semester starting right off with hand foot and mouth disease making its way to each of the kids, followed by a broken leg and non-weight bearing chaos that sent my own physical ailments into full tilt, and flowing right into the global COVID-19 pandemic. Looking back, it was honestly exactly what we needed at the time to delve into this more plug and play unit study with loads of routine and predictability.
But before all that chaos ensued, we kicked off the study with a homemade stencil painting of a sea turtle to wrap around our big canvas in our foyer where we proudly display our unit study books and creations each semester. It’s simple and authentic, and we love it, though it may not be Pinterest perfect. And honestly I love sharing the simple things we do that don’t have to overwhelm moms to be what we so often see online and on social media. I love every creation my boys pour their little hearts into. We had fun with other crafts like making our unit study table into an underwater diorama and fun toilet paper roll sharks from our highlights magazine. I highly recommend working in additional crafts and field trips for this unit study.
Before we start a unit study, I like to scour our bookshelves and game closet for all the relevant books, puzzles, toys and games that involve the subject of our unit study. I put as much as I can out on our unit study table that greets visitors in our foyer and it’s an easy go to for fun activities and learning in between things or to supplement our curriculum, library books, and crafts/experiments. I’m always amazed by how much we already have on hand!
Within the Oceans study, each “day” includes links to a couple short videos to pique everyone’s interest in the sea creature that will be explored. There is also a quote of the day, often from scripture, for the kids to copy into their journal. One of my favorites about the study was the WOW words. Each “day” in the study had five WOW words to look up in the dictionary. This was my son’s first introduction to looking up words and it was fun to teach him to use the dictionary. I remember as a kid after I learned to read, I loved being able to just go seek out information in the dictionary or encyclopedia and learn on my own. He had a lot of fun looking for the words and finding others he was interested in as he went.
We added each of the navigators and explorers we learned about to our timeline that we started with the days of creation from our Dinosaur Unit Study the semester before. The study started off with Noah and went all the way through Jacques Cousteau. This was particularly fun to learn along side them as I took history a bit for granted as a kid, but have such an appreciation for it now. My children are very young to retain too much of these details even in the lower level track of the study, but I love planting those seeds and watching where their interests take them.
Despite the bizarre events of the semester, it wound up being a great time together and we all learned a lot and had a lot of fun. We would not be nearly as excited about school without our unit studies. Individual subjects are great but sneaking a bunch into one topic while being able to learn in a more hands on manner all together is one of the things we all love most about homeschooling. With so many kids so close together and not yet learning independently, unit studies are the best. And there are so many great resources like this out there that help to make homeschooling the joy that it is.
**Due to more family medical issues, I’m posting this a bit late as we’ve already started our next semester. But I can’t wait to share what we are doing now. Stay tuned!
