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.