Our Bees Unit Study is perfect for Grades 1-4 as it complements the Nature Sciences of the early years. A Unit Study meets the needs of multiple grades in a single unit by using various resources and providing an assortment of projects that children may do at their own level.

While, we tend to follow the Waldorf pedagogy, there are times I put together a unit study rather than a Main Lesson Block. A unit study is a concentration on a single subject for a short period of time. This Unit Study on Birds includes hands-on activities and plenty of picture books.

Unit Studies on plants and animals (or insects) children see often is a great way to introduce a nature science to young elementary ‎students. The study of butterflies delights children and watching them go through their metamorphic process is thrilling.

A unit study can be as broad or as specific as you would like it to be. While doing our unit study, we departed to do a smaller owl unit study. In part I was inspired by resources I had seen other homeschoolers using and was excited to include that into our bird unit. Once we included those resources into our bird unit, I realize that we had created a mini Owl unit.

The Ocean Main Lesson block is an opportunity to dive into the ocean and explore above and below. This block centers around the California coast primarily, but takes on a broader historical aspect as well. Smaller blocks on Whales, Turtles and more are included within the larger block.

Our Whales unit is another mini unit inspired by a larger unit: Ocean. However, sometimes it’s a book or project that inspires a unit as well. Some of the resources for this unit were ones I’d see other homeschoolers use and found them inspiring and thus a mini unit on Whales emerged.

When doing our Ocean Main Lesson block, we were inspired by the several other topics that would be their own months long unit. Sea Turtles appealed to us as we have visited Hawaii and swam amongst sea turtles. This unit is a mini unit lasting about a week or two. The resources are easily covered in a couple days but the projects take longer.

This unit emerged and faded several times over the years before I finally collected our resources to put together a unit study. The projects are drawn from other units as very little was organized specifically for this unit which inspired a unit on Dinosaurs and evolution.

On occasion, a child of mine will have a specific interest that warrants a specific unit study. The study of horses is one just unit study. My daughter become enthralled with horses and horseback riding, so I put together a unit to serve her interests as well as serve an older student with a variety of resources including historical for my older son.

We've come to the end of the school year and with that, the last homeschool haul of the year. While I'll still have other hauls planned for the following year, they won't be as extensive as the ones you've seen in the past. Needless to say, we have more than enough resources for this year and the years to come, and for next year, we have something different planned with our funding.

There's always excitement when I put together a new unit. It's the same excitement you might feel at the start of the new homeschool year. I love looking for new resources and assembling a nice balance of books and activities. It's not always fun though. Sometimes I hit creative roadblocks or in other cases, I'm overwhelmed by too many choices.

Not every new unit or main lesson blocks gets a new chalk drawing and in some cases, one chalk drawing serves for several units as this one does. This chalk drawing has the image of an owl, the life cycle of a frog and a bee and beehive.

WoolPets are the best kits for beginners looking to try wool felting. The kits are also an amazing value, you can get at least 4 owls from this kit (the package says 2), and if they are a bit smaller, you can get 6 adorable owls :)

After making egg replicas using chicken eggs, I decided I wanted to make something that was a little more accurate. I wasn't sure how to go about doing this project, but my Instagram family really came through. You always do :)

If you’ve never done an owl pellet dissection before, fair warning, it can be hard to stomach this activity. We took this project to the next level by assembling a complete rodent skeleton out of the remains we found in the owl pellet. While that wasn’t our initial intentions, I’m really glad we did so, and I found it to be the most educational part of this project.

While reading the book Birds, Nests and Eggs by Mel Boring, I had a moment of inspiration and thought it would be a fabulous hands-on project to create egg replicas of the birds we learned about in the book using chicken eggs.

Any excuse to pull out our art supplies for a project is a good reason! I love adding art and color to our unit studies, and this is one project I'm sure you'll love to try. This project was inspired by the book An Egg is Quiet by Dianna Aston and Sylvia Long.

We love our Professor Noggin's Trivia Cards, so making our own was not just a fun way to make a game we know we'll love but it was also a great way to add essential skills to our lessons: research, synthesis of information, handwriting and drawing.

This project was inspired by the book An Egg is Quiet by Dianna Aston and Sylvia Long. It's a beautifully illustrated book with a two-page spread on various eggs in gorgeous watercolors varying in size for accuracy.

There's a difference between an art lesson and an artistic representation of a lesson. Some lessons include narrations or dictation and some lessons include some art or handwork or hands-on project. While these activities always take longer, they are often more impactful, and meaningful.

For years now I've noticed that our science units lack substantial written narrations. While some of our science units may include a fair amount of writing, most don't and we end up with unit after unit with the same blank main lesson book.

Finding hands-on projects for our unit studies and main lesson blocks brings me so much joy, especially when we can make adorable owl peg dolls like these. They were pretty simple to do, but had their challenges.

We're on a roll with these nature cards. But this project is different. This time, because we are at the tail end of our unit (pun intended), I'm the only one who did this project. It's for a couple reasons that I didn't encourage the children to partake in this project.

Sometimes we overlook the simplest projects because they don't seem obvious. Like this one: An egg dissection. Most of us have and eat eggs so the thought of dissecting one often passes right by us, but what a great, easy and affordable project this is!

Whenever possible, I incorporate art into our lessons. It's not a art lesson, rather it's a science lesson that's artistically depicted. Sometimes art is the perfect medium for a lesson and when it comes to nature science, I can't think of a better choice. Each spring, we pull out our nature units, and I find that our main lesson books are either wholly empty or filled with magnificent watercolors.

Needle felting a bird is probably one of the easier animal felting projects you can do. Especially when you felt it out of one large piece of wool batt and simply shape the head rather than needle felting a head separately and adding it on to the body of the bird.

Whenever possible, I incorporate art into our lessons. It's not a art lesson, rather it's a science lesson that's artistically depicted. Sometimes art is the perfect medium for a lesson and when it comes to nature science, I can't think of a better choice.

Although I'm not an artist, I still enjoy drawing, painting and other art expressions. But everyone has an inner artist we can all nurture. I wanted to share the tips that might help you enjoy the art process and help you be more satisfied with your artwork.

What if you could cozy up on the couch surrounded by a stunning library and be handed one book after another that is sure to delight you and your kids. Sounds too good to be true? That's exactly what you'll be getting each month with Build Your Library's family book subscription crate.

After many of you saw these Into The Forest game pieces, you asked about the game, where to find it, and if we liked it. The thing is that at the time, we weren't playing the game, we were only uses the beautiful cards for drawing inspiration for our nature studies.

There's always one more project I think of when a unit is over, but being able to stop at a high point during a unit is a skill in and of itself that I continually strive for! Now that our unit is officially over and the projects and hands on activities are all complete, it's time to access how everything went.

Welcome to our mini unit on Sea Turtles. This was truly a mini unit lasting less than a week and specifically only 2 days.

Learn how to make nature journaling or nature study cards for any unit! As we continue our nature unit study on Sea Turtles, we decided that the quickest and most beautiful way to show learning for this unit is in the form of these nature trivia cards. Each card has been photographed and is on the blog post for this video.

For the past four billion years, the water on this planet has remained the same. It's been recycled: evaporating from the seas and oceans, forming clouds and finally precipitating out as rain or snow. We recreated a simple closed system to show the water cycle.

This was the fastest unit we ever did and for that, there are a few things that worked vastly different from our other units. In this review, I talk about the various books and resources we used and how our projects and activities progressed.

Welcome to our unit study on Whales! Or as we’ve learned, cetaceans. We are diving into this unit to study a select few marine mammals and to do so, we’ve sourced a variety of books that we are thrilled to share with you.

Working on a small chalkboard, gives you the beauty and the gesture of an illustration without the time commitment and grandeur of working on a larger job board.

For this unit, we chose the super easy iceberg demonstration. Not only was it very easy to do, it was also extremely educational.

These were the easiest so far. In part, I think because whales are easier to draw than some of the other nature images we’ve done before. Also, I made these with a white background which simplified the process.

Shorty units have their pros and cons. For one, we can get through a unit before anyone tires of it, but we rarely have enough time to dive deeply into a unit that's short.

At the start of the school year, we start receiving a lot of our homeschool supplies that are going to be used for the year in our various unit studies and lessons. This haul contains many books that are going to be used for our Horse unit that I’m putting together for my now 9 year old daughter.

Oh my! New books are here as well as main lesson notebooks, fountain pens, hands-on kits and much more! Dive into these new materials with me! Many are from Amazon, but the Waldorf supplies are from my favorite Waldorf vendor: A Child's Dream. More details can be found on my website at the blog post that accompanies this video.

It's that time of year again...the time where my wishlist is bursting and finally books and resources are being moved from the wishlist to the shopping cart and what follows after that is pure happiness as all these inspiring supplies start trickling in. Since all our supplies didn't come in at once, you can click the links below for the other homeschool hauls for the start of this year.

Before the school year began, my daughter asked to study horses. So from that request came a thrilling unit that has me so thankful she asked! In addition to picture books, we have historical fiction, The Winter Horse and The Perfect Horse, both set in World War II time and Reckless also set in that time, but based on a true story about a horse and his championing heroism.

Design your own horses with this kit from Breyer. I was so impressed with the quality of the materials and so pleased with the outcome. We loved this kit so much we actually bought another one. Each was a bit different as the horses were posed differently and maybe they represent different breeds as well. We are using this kit for our horse unit study.

We love our hands-on project and this one fits perfectly for our Ancient Greece unit as well as our horse unit. This project was for my 13-year-old son who was able to assemble it on his own. Though it should take about 2 hours, with drying time and breaks, it took us a couple weeks to complete.

Pulling together books for our American History Unit, I knew I wanted a substantial amount of material on the Lewis and Clark expedition. We did a the westward movement and Texas history back in 2012-2013 while living in Dallas for a year, and I really enjoyed learning about the Lewis and Clark expedition and wanted to expand on it this time around.

The Westward Movement spans over 100 years in American History, so within this unit, there are other subunits: American Civil War, Lewis & Clark Expedition and California History & Gold Rush. Even so, I still have a lot of material, and may choose to split this unit up further.

I debated whether I should have a separate unit for Native American because the stories and history of the Native Americans spans the whole history of the US. This is a small compilation of supplies that would stand alone as a unit, but what would be more authentic is to distribute these materials over all our other American History unit, as currently each unit only has a little bit of relevant Native American material.

How do you build a unit study out of books? How do you feel confident putting the curriculum aside and diving into living books and hands on projects without feeling the pressure to hit state standards or succumb to peer pressure when you try something different? How do you make books the curriculum?!

While preparing for our next main lesson block, I came across materials I had pulled for a project to use during our Lewis and Clark Expedition and Western Movement Unit Study.

Dig Discover and Display kits come in all varieties. I mistaken called this one Indian Relics, when in fact it's Archaeology USA. We have been using these kits for years in our homeschool and my children enjoy them immensely.

Weaving is one of those projects you need to dedicate yourself to. It takes time, perseverance and mindfulness. Weaving engages your mind and hands, and unlike knitting for instances, you can't easily take your eyes off your project.

his is a great activity for a nature unit study or for an Indigenous People. It's fairly simple, but does take some practice or skill. What I did was get the project started out for my 10-year-old son who continued making it until the end, when I finished it off.

Making a journal can be easy and simple or spectacular and somewhat difficult. This is the easy version. It's the version where you don't need to fold or stitch. What this means is you can find more affordable options to make a journal.

I'm guessing that by now, these kits by Krystal are hard to come by. Dig, Discover and Display Indian Relics is an excavation kit in which you excavate a frame of 'Native American Relics' that you paint once the frame is cleaned of dust and plaster.

One of my favorite stories about the Western Movement is the story of Lewis and Clark. But in all honesty I'm less interested in Lewis and Clark and completely fascinated by Sacagawea. On multiple occasions she not only saved the expedition but saved the lives of the men of the expedition and throughout it all she was just a teenager!

Our exploration of Alaska came about because my sister, Samiah and her family, moved up to Alaska in the fall of 2020. Once there, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor and after surgery, it was discovered that it was an aggressive and fast growing brain cancer.

This unit started out book heavy, but we managed to squeeze in a couple projects for which I’m very happy. I scheduled this unit for a single week. Let’s see how much we can get through. So far we’ve done really well diving into the picture books and starting both the biography and the novel.

For this chalk drawing, I used the book In Search of the Northern Lights as inspiration. I used a few pages from this book which depict a brilliantly colored sky and landscape and I was eager to include it in our unit.

Here’s the chalk drawing we did for our Alaska and Arctic unit. You can see a longer tutorial on the blog post for this unit and on YouTube. First let me tell you about the chalkboard. It’s awesome!!

Join me for this live lesson in which my 9-year-old daughter and I draw illustrations inspired by the book Raven and the Tide Lady. This lesson lasted 45 minutes and only included drawing. We did no written work. We used Faber Castell pastels and then switched to Sargent Art Chalk Pastels.

For this project, I used handmade knitting needles I made during the Handwork Conference. You can find more information about the conference by visiting Waldorf Handwork Educators I used bulky weight yarn by Lamb's Pride in various neutrals. You can find Lamb's Pride at many online vendors, but I frequent A Child's Dream for most of our Waldorf needs.

This was one easy but lengthy project! It did get a bit tedious, but it worked well with all the reading we did with our Alaska and Arctic unit. While I read, my 14-year-old son knit and sometimes, we would switch. I did cast on and bind off for him, though he is capable of doing that one his own and actually retaught his older 22-year-old brother when he made a scarf recently. I also added fringe to the end.

In all my years of homeschooling this past year is the first time we made snowflakes. Living in southern California where it never snows (where we live), we've never done winter projects that involve cold weather and snow.

This is one simple yet beautiful project you can complete in no time, especially if you do the stitching like my 11-year-old son and not like me! We used gold and metallic DMC thread to stitch designs on the wool blend die cut snowflakes using two simple stitches: the running stitch and the back stitch.

I bought this kit when we did our American history units when I put together our unit on California history. We ended up not quite reaching that California history when those history units were over (they'll be revisited again), but I had all the kits.

Opening activities which include games are a family favorite in our homeschool and one of our favorite trivia games is the Professor Noggin's Trivia Cards. Over the years, we started making our own. First with Astronomy Trivia Cards, then Bird Trivia Cards and most recently Bee Trivia Cards.

This is the quickest I've ever decided to put together a unit. I sourced books, put together the unit and did it all within about a month. Part of doing it so quickly or rather being able to complete it in just one week was the fact that we didn't include any projects officially.

Handwork in Waldorf schools takes as much care in choosing the work that will be done as choosing the lessons. In some cases the lessons and the handwork coordinate beautifully. Cross Stitch and embroidery are the main projects for this grade. Felting a ball is the first step to an embroidered ball. This project may take weeks to months to complete. Cross stitch is a beautiful skill to develop at this age.

Wet felting is such a fun engaging craft. With a bowl of warm/hot water and another bowl of cold water. You also need dish soap and wool. Children love the process of compacting the wool into a ball and bouncing it around once it’s firm enough and ready for drying.

Some handwork projects span several weeks or months and others can be done in a day. Making a felted ball falls somewhere in between depending on how you make it and for what purpose. In grade 4 Waldorf schools, you may find students making and embroidering felted balls. These gorgeous masterpieces take months to do, but the end result is breathtaking.

Welcome autumn with this simple, yet beautiful handwork project that's great for children about eight years and up. All you need is felt and embroidery thread.

In Grade 4 Waldorf Handwork, the embroidered ball project introduces students to three-dimensional shaping and decorative stitching, blending form and function in a joyful, tactile way. As they stitch panels together and embellish them with colorful embroidery, students refine fine motor skills, practice symmetry, and express creativity through pattern and color.

Cross-stitch introduces students to precise, rhythmic handwork that supports focus, patience, and spatial awareness. Working with geometric patterns on even-weave fabric, children gain confidence in stitching while exploring symmetry, color harmony, and traditional folk designs.

Stitching a simple running stitch on season shapes like leaves and snowflakes is a great opportunity to practice skills students will need in the upcoming years with short achievable projects. Adding stitching detail to snowflakes is a beautiful seasonal craft.