My word for 2016 is Today. In 2015, I experienced a lot of sudden deaths: about one per quarter. People I knew and loved disappeared just like that out of my life. And just when I recovered to a degree, wham! another one would depart. Plus the increase in terrorist attacks has really shaken my foundations. So I realized on a new level that life is short and can end at any moment.
Hunedoara Castle in Romania, one of the sites we plan to visit in April 2016 (by Andrei Stroe via Wikimedia Commons)
Tomorrow is not promised. Today is all I have. I plan not to plan in 2016. That does not mean I will not plan at all. It just means that I will plan one quarter at a time – 12 weeks, according to the 12-week year principle.
Things are shaping up nicely for 2016. It looks like we will take a trip to Romania, which will give me an opportunity to teach the kids about my home country and try my hand at a unit study.
I am not a unit study fan because unit studies seem limitless. I need boundaries around my learning goals. I need to know when we finished a book, a semester, a quarter, a study. But unit studies do not have boundaries. You keep adding and adding and there is no end to it. Besides, they take work in planning and executing. I don’t want to reinvent the wheel. I would like a book, a workbook, a material I can follow and when I reach the end I can take a break.
That’s just the way my mind works. But this unit study is special and dear to my heart and it is important for the kids to learn about Romania, as they are half Romanian. And I don’t even have a history textbook for Romania so I will have to rely on the internet a lot, I suppose.
So I will put on the table several lessons in geography, history, language, cooking, science and reading. Who knows? Maybe a book can come out of this, with an outline we can use for all the countries of the world. Now there’s a project! How do I get myself into these publishing projects a few paragraphs after I vowed planning not to plan in 2016?
Romania Unit Study – click on the name to open and download a PDF.
Complete picture attribution: By Andrei Stroe (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 ro (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ro/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons
Hi. My children are also half Romanian but we live half a world away! We are taking them to Romania for the first time in 2 months. Would you be willing to share your unit study materials please? I’d love to did a unit study before we go. Thanks so much.
Thanks for your comment. I will email my unit study on Romania to you and add it to this post as well, as a hyperlinked attachment at the end of the post.