If you are looking for fun and frugal homeschooling ideas, then you should try doing unit studies. Herein, everything that you do (art, literature, music, social studies, science and sometimes even math) is based upon 1 theme. You can then pull all of your resources together to learn about the theme. Since this study can be adapted to any age, you can teach all of your children at once. This can be as structured or as child-led as you desire.

Some of the topics that you may wish to do a unit study around include:

1.A historical era (i.e. African American history)

2.A culture (i.e. Asian culture)

3.A science topic (i.e. weather)

4.A book that you have read or are currently reading (i.e. Diary of Anne Frank)

Once you have decided upon what topic you want to study, it is time to put together your unit study. Here are the steps that you need to take in order to do so:

1.Take a trip to the library to see what resources they have that you can use. Some of the things that you could use here are fiction and non-fiction books; art books; videos; music; science books; and cookbooks.

2.Once you come home from the library, take some time to search the Internet for other ideas that you can use. You will find virtual tours, online games, interactive sites, printable worksheets or coloring pages and much more online.

3.Make a list of any community resources that are available such as museums, a section of town that is steeped with culture or history, or a special spot in nature that will be helpful to visit. You will need to have your library books and Internet resources gathered together prior to doing this.

4.Now that you know exactly what you have available for you to use, it is time to sit down and put it all together. Make lists of everything that you will be using and decide when you will use it. If you have a list of items that you will need to get for this project, then put that in a place where you are sure to take it with you. For field trips, you may need to make reservations, find out what the entrance fee is, and try to find out if there are any days where there are discounts or free admission.

As you can see, it is going to take a lot of work to put together a unit study. You may want to limit yourself to how many of these you do. For instance, some parents decide to only do 1 large 1 per semester along with a few smaller ones that do not take as much energy and planning. Of course, you will need to decide what will work best for you and your family. Make sure that you have enough time to properly plan this out.

Here are some of the other areas that you may find to also be time consuming whenever it comes to putting together your own unit study:

1.If you decide to do math, this may be a little tricky. Of course, you could take time to learn about the currency that is used in other countries. You can also come up with simple word problems for your child to work out. Otherwise you are better off to continue on with the math curriculum that you are already using.

2.If you are going to adapt this unit study to fit various ages of children, then you are going to have to modify the activities a little. This is because younger children are going to need to read easier books and do simpler projects. One idea that will work well, while also helping your older child out, is to have them show and explain things to your younger child. You are still going to need to have some independent projects for your older child to work on while you are working with your younger child. While this may sound like a lot of work, you will find that it is actually very helpful for you to be teaching both of your children the same things at once.

Of course, you can always simply purchase a unit study if there is 1 that you really want to do and yet do not have the amount of time necessary to invest in putting it together for yourself. However, if you really want to keep your expenses to a minimum, then you should really take the time to use the library. You should also look through your own supplies and the things that you can purchase from the thrift store so that you will not spend a lot of money on supplies either. Of course, you may still want to budget for 1 bigger craft or field trip. This is completely up to you though and you really do not have to do this.

Unit studies are a great way to ensure that your children are retaining and understanding what they are learning about. This is because unit studies allow children to become fully engrossed in the topic at hand. As such, they will be better able to connect with the topic so that they will definitely end up remembering a lot more than had they simply read about it in a text book.