12 Days of Winter Unit Study Packs

Long before I was a homeschool mom, I was a classroom teacher. I taught mostly in the public school setting, but for a few years, I was at a private school. With that position came way less oversight and way more leeway in my teaching strategies. And, that’s when I learned to teach with UNIT STUDIES. It was a fun, all-encompassing experience for my students that was highly engaging and educational!

Then I moved back into a public school setting and had to stop making my homemade snacks, put away the fun crafts and shelve most of my imaginative literature because I was bound by the district’s very specific curriculum. Those days were much more boring.

So, when my husband and I decided to homeschool our only son, you better believe that I dug into my old UNIT STUDIES files! My son had so much fun learning about frogs, deserts, tractors, worms, firefighters….whatever struck his fancy, we did a UNIT STUDY on it. He learned so much and we had so much fun!

And, then he grew up.

He’s now 13 years old and in high school. And, though I try to mix things up for him with different styles of curriculum, I cannot even pretend to allow the creativity and flexibility of his younger years. Big kids and high school can still be fun to teach but it’s just a different sort of fun.

But with the holidays upon us, I have been reminiscing about all of the fun UNIT STUDIES we used to do. So I decided to create some new UNIT STUDIES for winter! I had so much fun that I ended up creating an entire series!

The 12 DAYS of WINTER UNIT STUDY PACKS

I’m sure I won’t be able to convince my teenager to partake in all of this fun but maybe he’ll play along with his Mama for some of it. And, hopefully, you and your babes can enjoy some of it too!

In addition to finding a list of the UNIT STUDIES below, you will also find a phenomenal list of other series of posts that will be put out by bloggers over the first part of December. There are some fabulous ideas that you should definitely check out!

But before you run off and start checking out all of those great posts, let me briefly tell you how I organize my UNIT STUDIES and what they typically include….

READ: I usually start a UNIT STUDY with fiction. I find that fiction stimulates excitement for the topic which, in turn, creates the perfect learning mindset for the kids. And a well-chosen piece of literature lends itself to so many immediate lessons, including comprehension questions, rhyming practice, studies on parts of speech and more!

There are two Mini Book Companion Packs for this series….one for FICTION and one for NON-FICTION. Both are FREE!

WRITE: Depending on what we have read, I like to create some sort of quick but fun writing activity to engage another part of the brain. It might be rewriting part of the story we just read or illustrating the main character in a different setting and then describing it. Anything that gets the student writing and connecting with the topic.

There is also a WRITING ACTIVITIES PACK you can download for FREE!

CREATE: Creating some sort of art project not only allows for hands-on, multi-sensory learning, but the final project also serves as a visual reminder of the topic and all that was learned along the way! But, I am not an artist nor am I a fan of big, complicated projects that require a lot of supplies or time. So, my recommendations will always be simple and straight-forward {but hopefully cute and clever!}

ENJOY: Including some sort of fun, clever food item when studying a new topic not only adds an extra dash of enjoyment to learning, it increases the educational understanding of the topic. Food somehow cements things in my brain so I assume it does the same for kiddos too…or maybe they just enjoy the snickety snacks. But, in any case, I think food items designed to go along with a UNIT STUDY are a win-win! But, am I not only NOT an artist, I am also NOT a chef so my food suggestions will be simple to make with run-of-the-mill ingredients.

LEARN: This will involve some type of non-fiction resource. If possible, I prefer to find good, educational books on a fairly basic level on the topic and create comprehension activities to go along with it.

And there is an Informational Text and Writing Prompt Pack that you can download. You will find a code to make it FREE within each post!

EXPLORE: This might include a short video link, movie suggestion, song packet….anything that takes the topic and allows for a new level of exploration. Always fun! And with the crazy amount of streaming options we have access to, I have found some real gems!

READ SOME MORE: There are usually too many great literature options on a particular subject…too many to actually read and study together. But, anytime I started a new UNIT STUDY in the classroom, I would check out as many books on the subject as possible and allow the kids to just immerse themselves in the subject for a good hour. They could grab any book that struck their fancy. Read if they wanted. Or just thumb through the pictures. No matter the subject and no matter the kid, this was always highly effective at building excitement for and interest in the new topic. I did it with my son too. Thank goodness our library did not have check-out limits!