Review: Homeschool Legacy’s “Forest for the Trees” unit study
Are you looking for a trees unit study? I think I’ve found one you’ll love. Here is our review of Homeschool Legacy’s “Forest for the Trees” unit study.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of Forest for the Trees in order to honestly review it here. This post contains affiliate links.
Forest for the Trees
One thing I really love about these unit studies is that there are so many choices- lots of books, experiments, projects, and field trip ideas. There’s no way to do them all–so you just pick and choose what’s best for your family.
Forest for the Trees is actually a 4-week unit study. She gives a sample lesson plan for using it Monday-Friday each week. We spread it out to 6 weeks. It’s called a Once-a-Week Unit Study because all of the main “work” is done only on one day of the week. The other days you will still spend some time on it by reading aloud from the great selection of books.
Here are a few of the things we did for this cool trees unit study!
For Bible Study/devotionals:
We read Genesis and started memorized Romans 1:19-20. We also read the passages she suggested from Matthew, Jeremiah, and Galatians and memorized the fruit of the Spirit. There was a chart in the unit study to print out and put on the refrigerator. When one of us noticed another family member displaying a fruit of the Spirit, they would put a star in that person’s box.
Science:
We read about trees lots of tree books that we checked out from the library. (These books were all listed in the curriculum.)
We found a twig from a spring tree and identified the different parts of it like the leaf scars and lenticels. They drew it and labeled it.
We identified pollen cones and seed cones on different types on conifers while at the park.
Science experiments such as seeing how the water is drawn up into the leaves of a plant. I loved all the other easy-to-do science experiments as well.
Literature:
We read The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein and memorized the poem “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer. We started listening to My Side of the Mountain on CD in the car and read many other shorter books that were recommended as well. See some great ideas at my Pinterest board “Forest for the Trees.”
Art:
The kids drew some trees from the book Draw 50 Flowers, Trees, and Other Plants by Ames.
Each week had different suggestions for art projects to do.
Field Trips:
One suggestion was to climb a tree. The tree below has 5 kids in it!
We had an awesome field trip to the Chicago Botanic Gardens, where we saw a wide variety of trees. We also would have loved to make it out to the Morton Arboretum–maybe this summer. She suggested a couple of other field trip ideas I wouldn’t have thought of!
Different trees at the Botanic Gardens:
See more ideas here: Pinterest Board “Forest for the Trees.”
What we loved:
I was exposed to so many more books that I have never heard of or read before. We would have missed these treasures with the Homeschool Legacy trees unit study. I also love the variety and flexibility. We were busy with many other activities and school subjects, but we still found a way to make this be such a positive experience for my kids. I only barely scratched the surface of all that was contained in this 32-page ebook.
There are 2 other special things about the Homeschool Legacy’s unit studies:
You can use them for a full year of your history or science curriculum. Just choose 4 or 5 that fit what you’d like to learn! It tells you how long each one is supposed to take (4 weeks, 6 weeks, etc.) They are appropriate for grades 2-12 (but high schoolers will still need lab sciences). Also, the unit studies specifically include the information needed to use them to gain Boy Scout or American Heritage Girl badges or 4H projects.
You’ll definitely want to check out the great variety of once-a-week unit studies that are available. We’re going to do the one on Weather this summer–it sounds so fun!
