planning a thematic unit

Planning

Aug 3

Written By Sarah

We are Waldorf-inspired homeschoolers, and while that means many things for us, one of the main things is that we utilize main lesson blocks (MLB) for the bulk of our learning time. We are not following a traditional Waldorf MLB schedule; however, we are diving deep into a particular topic and note-booking our learning. These MLB are essentially a unit study. So, let's talk about unit studies — what is a unit study and how I plan our MLB/units.

Planning a unit study begins with a topic. You can choose any topic you like, although I try to select themes that my kids and I will enjoy. Sure, you can look to your state's standards for learning to get an idea of what topics in a traditional classroom setting — but you don't need to follow the same schedule for learning as a conventional classroom. Still stuck? Here's a list of almost 200 themes to get you started:

Now, looking at these themes - you can do a broad theme or a more narrow theme. You can look at the history, science, or math of a particular topic. You can look at famous people within a topic. You can pick a specific element of a topic. Let's walk through an example: animals.

Animals:

A unit on animals could be any of the following:
Animals in general and characteristics of different classes of animals
A specific classes (mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, amphibians)
A specific habitat (farm animals, rainforest animals, etc.)
The evolution of a specific animal
A specific class of animals Animals
Animals in a particular geographic region
A specific animal

Once I have a theme selected, I break that theme down into smaller topics. If you get stuck thinking about topics, you can pull out a non-fiction book for that theme and look at the table of contents to get some ideas.

When thinking about a MLB/unit, I think about including a variety of elements. Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences is one way to think about different approaches to include.

Using a Trello board or a lesson template for planning out a theme can be helpful. I like to plan my MLB/units using a Trello board. Here is a template for thinking about MLB/units using a variety of learning experiences.

If paper and pencil is more your thing, feel free to grab this printable unit planner.

We tend to do our units for roughly 5 weeks and then take a week off before starting the next unit. We spend 15-20 minutes a day on our theme. As we work through our topics and activities, the kids document their learning by drawing/labeling/narrating their learning in their main lesson books (blank notebooks).

One of the great things about using unit studies in homeschooling is that you can differentiate for kiddos based on their age/interests/abilities. Everyone can be learning about the same theme but at different levels of understanding.