unit studies – Raising Little Seekers

One of the reasons I began Raising Little Seekers was so I could put the units I created as a public school teacher (and then used in my homeschool) together in a “pretty package” and offer them to the general public. I’ll admit, this process hasn’t been easy. I am a novice graphic designer at best (and an utter failure/copycat at worst). Though my ideas are genuine and well thought out, I generally just throw them together in my planner and go from there when executing them. It’s the presentation for public consumption that has had me struggling–that, and finding the time to do it! All that to say that this journey has already taken longer than I hoped when I started out. The first unit I released was the Fruit of the Spirit family devotional. You can read more about that here. Then came my composer study on Pyotr Tchaikovsky, which is a 6-week close look at the composer, his ballets, and his country of origin. I didn’t necessarily promote that unit very well (again, something I struggle with) but my kids and I had a really good time listening to his music and studying his ballets when we went through it ourselves! But this next unit is very dear to me as it is one of the first units I ever actually wrote when I was a public school teacher. During my final year of teaching, I was (wrecklessly) moved from the fourth grade to the first grade–in the middle of the school year. It had been decided that the first grade needed more help and that I was the teacher for the job. It was a frightening experience but I stepped up to the challenge. And then I proceeded to make my own curriculum and write several author studies along the way. The first of which was an author study on beloved author and artist, Eric Carle. I have since taken the lessons from this unit and put them together in a comprehensive way and aligned it to today’s kindergarten standards.

So let’s dive into the colorful world of Eric Carle! In this comprehensive kindergarten unit, you will find 14 unique lessons across the curriculum–meaning, they will hit on language arts, math, science, art, and more! You and your child will read over 15 of Eric Carle’s beloved children’s books. You will dive into time, calendar knowledge, number sense, plants, moon phases, colors, optical illusions, food, and conversations about friends and socialization. All while reading some truly remarkable picture books. What could be better to jump start your child’s education?! Or what could be better to add a little “umph” to the end-of-the-year slog we homeschooling mamas sometimes feel?! Because this unit is only 14 lessons long, you could easily take anywhere from 7-14 weeks to complete it. There is also an accompanying set of printing practice pages that is FREE with or without a purchase of the author study. So even if now is not the time for you to purchase another resource, you can absolutely get the Eric Carle themed printing pages for free from my shop.

Ultimately, I really hope you enjoy this Eric Carle author study. It is the first of (hopefully) many! And if you’re ever in Western MA, be sure to check out the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art!

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I’ve always been a fan of unit studies, so I love that this year’s curriculum lends itself easily to unit style learning. I know this goes against everything Charlotte Mason advocated, and I’m okay with this area of disconnect. Though I do find it funny that while she disliked unit studies, she did advocate for the study of a single artist or composer at a time… sounds a little “unit-esque” to me. 😉

In a previous post, I outlined what curricula we’re using for which subjects, and what our days look like. In my last post, “What’s in a Name“, I touched on how our weeks are structured as a whole and how we’re managing to fit in all the “fun stuff” on a regular basis. If you read those, you know I spent a significant amount of time over the summer planning out our school year. Though not necessary for all homeschoolers, I like to get a big picture of our year and then zoom in on each piece or unit, and enhance it if I can. I rearranged the countries that were outlined in My Father’s World to suit my preferences. (I wanted to study Antarctica in January rather than late spring–call me crazy–which led to rearranging the other units as well. I was happy with the result, though!) Then I added in the units from “Around the World with Picture Books” from Beautiful Feet Books, the combined 3rd and 1st grade sciences, and the author studies for first grade.

So here’s a “zoomed in” look at our first units: studying the countries of North America, forests and deserts, and author studies on Laura Numeroff plus the start of Eric Carle.

We started in the U.S.A. with a review of what we were learning last year through our exploration of United States history. We also began our unit on forests. Both curricula we’re using this year call for quite a bit of notebooking and rather than try to make it all work together and exasperate my children with an intense amount of writing and recording, I decided we’d make a mural out of butcher paper for each ecosystem studied in lieu of an ecosystem notebook. It makes a nice addition to our homeschool decor and it’s fun to see the scene come together over time.

While studying deciduous forests, we used our home field advantage and took several nature walks and field trips around the area. We’re attempting to take a nature walk every week this year but in addition to that, we climbed Mt. Wachusett, hiked Quabbin Reservoir, and took other walks off the beaten path…

To help keep Emmalyn included in our studies, she had her own “units” on trees, leaves, autumn, and the changing colors. I also found these cute “cut & paste” papers on ecosystems for preschoolers. They are a great way to practice those scissor and glue skills and make a nice addition to our mural! We did lots of nature collecting on our walks and made these neat field guides with leaf prints on the covers. In the end, we had a pretty awesome forest mural happening…

After the United States, we hit Canada, while staying within our forest unit. This allowed us to expand to talking about coniferous forests as well. (You may have noticed the very hastily completed “pine tree” that graced our forest mural…) While studying Canada, we made “Inuit sculptures” out of soap, and “poutine” for dinner one night!

Before I talk about Mexico, I should mention our author studies. When Abby was in first grade, I split the curriculum into two years because I started her schooling at a young age. So with only half of a one-year curriculum to complete, it was easy to fit in monthly author studies with their own lessons. This year, we are essentially trying to do 3 different curricula in one year PLUS the author studies, so it’s not as easy to do all the lessons. But just as Charlotte Mason saw the value in studying a single artist or composer at one time, I still see the value in zooming in on a single author to study their voice, style, and genre. We may not do all the lessons and activities that I wrote a couple years ago, but we still learn a little something about each author as we go. We began with Laura Numeroff and transitioned into Eric Carle when we started Mexico because his books are easily found in Spanish and I thought it would be fun to do some side-by-side reading! Eric Carle’s art is really fun, too, so we did find a way to fit that in! To find out how I structured those author studies when Abby was in first grade and to download the material for FREE, click the links for Laura Numeroff and Eric Carle.

On to Mexico! And deserts! We finished up North America by spending an AMPLE amount of time in Mexico; reading Spanish picture books, studying deserts, making plenty of tortillas and churros from scratch, blasting mariachi music while we cleaned the house on “Work Wednesdays”, and I even found an old movie I watched as a kid called “Friendship’s Field” about a family who hired Mexican workers to help them on their farm in the 1960s–that brought back memories! Capped it off with a family dinner at a local cantina and decided our homemade salsa was just a little bit better. 😉