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Using AI Resources In Your Homeschool Studies

As we have worked to create excellent and comprehensive learning resources for every one of our unit studies, we have taken a first step into navigating the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a component of education. Because AI is already typically a part of many traditional school approaches, we have explored various opportunities to incorporate it in a way that is safe and effective for you and your family. 

Using AI resources in your homeschool unit studies adds value and depth. This introduction includes safety tips for concerned parents.

And we are so glad we did! AI, used well, can add a valuable layer of exploration for curious learners.

Using AI Resources In Your Homeschool Unit Studies 

You’ll find that throughout our unit studies, we include Ask AI prompts to use with resources like Google Gemini, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity and other AI options. 

You will notice that we use AI only as an enhancement to learning, never the primary resource. We will always recommend books as the spine of any study. 

Using AI resources in your homeschool unit studies adds value and depth. This introduction includes safety tips for concerned parents.

“It is vitally important that we teach these bright young minds how to think and find answers. In this day and age of information explosion, textbook publishers rush to keep adding new information to textbooks, further abridging, condensing and modifying or deleting what they deem less important or not politically correct. Many textbooks now read like encyclopedias, with little interesting reading included, just facts, figures and condensed material.

If we can teach our children with interesting materials, challenging them to think, reason, analyze and dig deeper for further information, we will find them to be well-educated and ready to move on to a lifetime of challenge and questions and adventure. While we will never be able to teach a child everything, we can certainly teach them these things, providing a strong foundation and knowledge base for the future.” – What is a Unit Study? by Amanda Bennett

Explore Twisting Tornadoes, Sensational Sharks, Discover the Senses and more!

Two things to remember to ensure  AI learning is safe and beneficial:

  1. It is important that a parent always supervise a child’s use of an AI chatbot, to help guide their learning and ensure a safe experience.
  2. When your child wants to ask his/her own questions of the chatbot, make sure that you help create a kid-friendly AI prompt, giving specific instructions to the chatbot – including asking for age-appropriate answers for your child’s age.

“I am 7 years old. What are three characteristics of sharks?”

Amanda’s Examples of Using AI Tools

Using AI chats is one way to help your child explore and learn, without worrying about clicking links to unknown sites.

Here is an example of how our AI prompts carefully curate answers that are both age-appropriate and engaging for your homeschool study:

______________________    

Example:

AI Tool prompt:

I am a 7 year old. What can you teach me about cardinal birds?

AI Tool Response:

Cardinal birds are beautiful and interesting creatures! Here are some fun facts for a 7-year-old like you:

What Does a Cardinal Look Like?

  • Male cardinals are bright red with a black mask around their face and a pointy crest on their head.
  • Female cardinals are a soft brownish color with hints of red on their wings and crest.
  • Both males and females have orange beaks.

Where Do Cardinals Live?

  • Cardinals live in North America, including places like Louisiana (where you live!). You can see them in your backyard, forests, or parks.

What Do They Eat?

  • They love to eat seeds, berries, and sometimes insects.
  • You can attract cardinals by putting sunflower seeds in a bird feeder.

Do Cardinals Sing?

  • Yes! They have beautiful songs. Male cardinals sing to mark their territory and attract mates.
  • Their song sounds like “cheer, cheer, cheer” or “birdy, birdy, birdy.”

Fun Cardinal Facts:

  1. Cardinals are often called “redbirds” because of their color.
  2. They don’t migrate, which means you can see them all year round.
  3. Cardinals are the state bird of 7 states, including Louisiana’s neighbor, Mississippi.

How to Spot Them?

  • Look for bright red birds sitting on tree branches or hopping on the ground. They’re easiest to spot in winter when the trees have no leaves.

Would you like me to show you a picture or create one of a cardinal? 😊🕊️

My response:

Yes

AI Tool created this image then:

Here is a picture of a Northern Cardinal! Look how bright and beautiful it is sitting on the branch. Let me know if you’d like to learn more about cardinals or other birds! 😊🕊️

And now, let’s turn the page and begin this learning adventure with your child!

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The Advantages Of Using Unit Studies In Your Homeschool

The results of the unit study approach to education is the love of learning – mission accomplished. Here are just a few examples of the advantages of choosing unit studies for your child’s learning.

The results of the unit study approach to education is the love of learning – mission accomplished. Here are just a few examples of the advantages of choosing unit studies for your child's learning.

Photo by Amy Law

The Advantages Of Unit Studies

After writing unit studies for more than 20 years, I have been blessed to be able to see some of the advantages offered with this curriculum choice, firsthand. Our three children are either in or through college. One has a doctorate in veterinary medicine, another has a degree in business, and the youngest is graduating with honors in computer science.

Unit study is the name given to a type of curriculum tool where one topic is taken and looked at, or studied from many different aspects. They are called “cross-curricular” in approach, looking at the given topic across many areas of. learning including science, history, geography, literature, and others. A unit study can be called a thorough look at a single topic, as if you could pick up the topic in your hand and spin it like a globe, looking at the various components in all three dimensions.

This approach to education helped them learn to love learning – mission accomplished.

What Are The Results of The Unit Study Approach to Homeschool Education?

Unit studies can help your student develop into a self-motivated learner, eager to see what the world has to offer. Unit studies are flexible, and can be adjusted to fit the child, instead of trying to fit the child to a curriculum.

With the unit study approach, the child learns to think and reason and understand the deeper connections that God created in this world and how so much of His creation fits together according to His plan. Instead of learning about clouds and water vapor and the water cycle separately from the study of the rivers and lakes and streams and oceans of the world, they learn about these things just as they were created – as one part of an amazing world!

More Homeschool Helps

Learn more about the unit study approach to homeschooling:

Explore Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett Now!

Enjoy the journey,

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Homeschool Unit Studies vs. Other Approaches To Learning

Compare homeschool unit studies vs. other homeschool approaches and learn why homeschool unit studies may be the right choice for your family.

Compare homeschool unit studies vs. other homeschool approaches and learn why homeschool unit studies may be the right choice for your family.

Homeschool Unit Studies vs. A Traditional Homeschool Approach

Take a minute to compare a more traditional approach to unit studies. Textbooks are one form of curriculum used for education, and most of us were educated using textbooks. They are written from the perspective that everything in the world fits neatly into one of several categories, like science and geography. Textbooks include a collection of information that is to be read, memorized, and repeated for a test or exam.

The main problem with textbook learning is that the student becomes well trained at memorizing information, but unfamiliar with how all of this information applies to the world around him.

Compare homeschool unit studies vs. other homeschool approaches and learn why homeschool unit studies may be the right choice for your family.

By coming from a different perspective and teaching about a complete topic, unit studies offer the advantage of helping children grasp the big picture and then apply what they have learned to other areas and other topics.

How Do Unit Studies Compare to Other Homeschool Methods?


A frequently asked question about the unit study approach is if there will be holes or gaps in a child’s education using this method. Let me ask you this, how many textbooks did you finish in your own education? Most of us never finished a single one. We have huge holes in our own education and no matter the method, your child will too. There are not enough hours in the day or days in the year to cover everything.

So what can you do? You can teach your child that learning is an incredible adventure. A journey that you get to go on together. We want our children to be lifelong learners but we don’t present learning in such a way that children would want to do it their whole life.

Compare homeschool unit studies vs. other homeschool approaches and learn why homeschool unit studies may be the right choice for your family.

It is vitally important that we teach these bright young minds how to think and find answers. In this day and age of information explosion, textbook publishers rush to keep adding new information to textbooks, further abridging, condensing and modifying or deleting what they deem less important or not politically correct. Many textbooks now read like encyclopedias, with little interesting reading included, just facts, figures and condensed material.

If we can teach our children with interesting materials, challenging them to think, reason, analyze and dig deeper for further information, we will find them to be well-educated and ready to move on to a lifetime of challenge and questions and adventure. While we will never be able to teach a child everything, we can certainly teach them these things, providing a strong foundation and knowledge base for the future.

More Homeschool Helps

Learn more about the unit study approach to homeschooling:

Explore Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett Now!

Enjoy the journey,

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What Is A Unit Study?

Homeschool parents exploring various approaches to education may wonder, “What is a unit study?” This overview answers this question and provides examples for real world learning.

Answering the homeschool parent's question: What is a unit study? How integrated learning works and what to expect.

I am often asked to explain units studies, usually by newcomers to homeschooling or frustrated textbook parents. Well, first let me tell you what it is not. A good integrated study does not involve dry reading or memorization, busy work, endless worksheet completion, and bored children.

What Is A Unit Study?


A good unit study involves learning about one topic in an interesting and engaging way that will captivate the student and make them want to learn more and continue to think about the things they are learning. From cell phones to Ethiopia to catapults and elephants, unit studies can open up the world to your child, one topic at a time.

A good unit study involves learning about one topic in an interesting and engaging way that will captivate the student and make them want to learn more! Answering the homeschool parent's question: What is a unit study? How integrated learning works and what to expect.

As the process of “education” has developed through the ages, people have slowly but surely categorized and compartmentalized almost everything in our world into specific areas of learning. These include science, history, geography, art, and many others.

However, to a child that is eager to learn, the world is viewed as whole pieces, not segmented bits and parts. When they see the vast ocean, they see it as teeming with wildlife, full of sunken pirate ships and seashells, covered with rolling waves. A unit study tries to work from this viewpoint, taking one topic at a time and explaining the way that it works as a whole to the child that already sees it as a whole.

A unit study captures children’s attention and helps them understand the pieces of the whole as they fit together. When they learn about the oceans with a unit study, they learn about whales and dolphin, how the oceans flow, how explorers traveled the oceans with currents and wind, and how big and wide and deep the oceans. Through this approach, children develop critical thinking skills as they see how all of these components work together.

Answering the homeschool parent's question: What is a unit study? How integrated learning works and what to expect.

More Homeschool Helps

Learn more about the unit study approach to homeschooling:

Explore Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett Now!

Enjoy the journey,

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What Is A Lapbook?

What is a lapbook? It’s a creative and fun learning tool that reinforces the unit study content – a very simple, hands on activity that is included with both the Download N Go® and Passport Scout unit studies.

What is a lapbook? It’s a creative and fun learning tool that reinforces the unit study content – a very simple, hands on activity that is included with both the Download N Go® and Passport Scout unit studies.

What Is A Lapbook?

Children remember things that they create, and lapbooking reinforces the content of these studies.


The colorful lapbook templates are ready for you and your child to print, cut out, and complete together. With these elements, your child will make pop-ups, vocabulary mini-books, timelines, and much more. These pieces are then attached to a simple file folder that is folded in a unique way to create a special “lapbook”.

What is a lapbook? It’s a creative and fun learning tool that reinforces the unit study content – a very simple, hands on activity that is included with both the Download N Go® and Passport Scout unit studies.

Why is lapbooking a great choice for learning?

Lapbooking brings a lively, creative project appeal in a simple, ready-to-use format. Daily lapbooking templates are ready to just print and use. Have you ever created a lapbook with your child? These activities are made to be easy enough for a beginner, but “meaty” enough for children who have been lapbooking for a long time.
Children often learn more easily by doing something with the information they are studying. Creating a lapbook allows a child to display what he has been learning, and they work well with unit studies. Lapbooks can be a great learning tool for all learning styles, too!

Lapbooking encourages interest and motivation levels by using bite-sized pieces of information at a time. Shorter units help kids stay focused and provide them the thrill of completing their project. (Time to show Grandma as they excitedly tell all about each of those parts in their colorful lapbook masterpieces!)


You can choose whether or not to include the lapbooking components on each study – they are optional. And remember that you can tailor my studies to fit your child – the very best approach to learning.

What is a lapbook? It’s a creative and fun learning tool that reinforces the unit study content – a very simple, hands on activity.

More Homeschool Helps

Learn more about the unit study approach to homeschooling:

Explore Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett Now!

Enjoy the journey,