There is nothing like a planner to make a homeschool Mom start to dream. The Old Schoolhouse Magazine offers one of the most comprehensive planners I have seen in 15 years of home education. You can read my complete opinion of this amazing planner by clicking here.Although the 2009-2010 planner's service has come to an end the unit study based Schoolhouse Planner modules can still bring new life to your homeschool.
I LOVE unit studies. At one time, my homeschool support group referred to our family as "the unit study family". If you are unfamiliar with the term, a unit study is a organized effort to incorporate all subject areas of learning around one central topic or theme. Unit studies to me are like a big educational party filled with activities, recipes, great books to read and arts and crafts to make. They are especially wonderful with younger aged children who don't require a lot of structured learning, but really just need to catch the "fever" of the learning process.
I received the June 2010 Module (unit study) designed to accompany the 2009-2010 Schoolhouse Planner for free in exchange for this review. This module titled "Travel the World" is designed to introduce children of all ages to the study of world geography.
My children just completed a year long study of world geography so we did not use this module for this review. I wish however, I had latched on to "Travel the World" last year at this time. All of my planning and prep work for the World Geography co-op class I taught would have been done for me. "Travel the World" is filled with well written, concise informational text, poetry, fill in the blank activities, word scramble, word search, crossword and rebus puzzles, coloring pages which include world and continent maps, manuscript and cursive copywork, a high school expansion section with literature and activity suggestions, recipes, resource list and my personal favorite, answer keys. A section titled "Lapbook Beginnings" is included with several lapbook elements to be used as starting points for families wishing to develop a geography lapbook to chronicle their time with the study.
"Travel the World" was written especially for the homeschool family. Homeschool teachers can literally download the 52 page curriculm to their computer, open it up, print a few relevant pages and teach. It is a unit study homeschool teacher's dream come true and even strict textbook families will not be able to resist its charm and ease of use. To be able to take all children within your home on a learning adventure for a mere $7.95 is a treasure.
I have seen and participated in writing a lot of unit studies over the years and this is one of the best. It can be used as a brief break from routine studies or as one of a collection of units for an outstanding school year. Because of the variety of resources available through this digital download, families may choose to spend a full week using "Travel the World" exclusively or simply sample parts for several weeks. Since no two families look or school alike the flexibility and ease of use of this module make it a perfect homeschool product.
For more great Planner modules and products visit The Old Schoolhouse Store at http://www.theoldschoolhousestore.com/index.php?main_page=index
