UNIT OVERVIEW

A Note from Us | The 5 Part Framework

To live a life of Sonder, you are more than just learning, but immersing yourself in a topic. Use this page to help you craft the best experience you can.

A Note from Us

As part of living a life of sonder, we are hoping to teach our kids that learning never ends!

We want our kids to see us get excited to learn something new, and to experience the joy of learning together as a family.

These family unit studies are not intended to be full curriculums nor are they intended to be difficult to implement.

They are intended to be a simple framework to embrace a life of learning in your home and hopefully give you the tools to easily recreate this experience with your family time and time again.

We truly want to inspire you to embrace a life of sonder – a life of learning, exploring, and connection.

The 5-part Framework

Here is the 5 part framework we used for this study which you can take and apply to any topic you want. Sometimes our structure shifts from one topic to the next but generally this is the format we follow.

What works for our family and the ages of our kids right now is to spend about 1 week on a topic. We don’t necessarily do one every week either, rather we try to fit in one of these a month and introduce our kiddos to as many topics as we can!

The idea is to truly let our kids experience the joy of learning together, and create experiences out of our studies.

We want our kids to become lifelong learners, and help them see that learning can be fun! We hope this inspires you to do the same!

PART 1: GAMES

Why Play | Our Game | Additional Ideas

Why Play?

We begin part 1 with an imaginary game (or other type of game depending on the age of your kids). We do this for 3 key reasons:

1. Play boosts physical, intellectual, emotional, and cognitive well-being! Kids these days don’t get enough time to play. Playing unlocks the true magic of childhood, and so we want to build that into learning.
2. Play boosts curiosity in a subject. Enjoying a fun and engaging play activity together will boost interest and curiosity as we prepare to dive into a subject. Rather than force feeding facts, start with a game to build interest!
3. Quality time together. This one is really the most important. Ultimately, playing together as a family will bring us closer and we will never regret spending quality time together and trying to make that quality time more frequent.

Our Game

Our family decided to play “The Floor is Lava” by putting pillows and blankets across the floor that give you a path to move from point A to point B without touching the floor (i.e. the lava). 

We also decided one family member would be the “lava monster”.  This person is blindfolded and given a spray bottle that sprays “lava”. 

If all family members could move from point A to point B without getting sprayed and without touching the carpet, we won! 

We took turns being the lava monster and the kids had a great time!

Additional Ideas

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If the game we played doesn’t work for you THAT’S OK!

Here are some other ideas to help you brainstorm and find the best option for your family:

Bean Bag Toss – What I love about this idea is that you can get outside!

In addition, you can make it as easy or difficult as you need depending on the age of your kids. 

If you already have bean bags, you could also just create your own volcano toss with a cardboard box and some crayons and scissors! 

Top Trumps – This is the Volcano version of the popular top trumps card game!  This game is easy to pick up and fun way to learn about different topics, in this case volcanoes.  Great one for on the go as well because it’s a card game.

Lava Lizards – this one is a matching game so it would be great for littles and could easily be played in speed rounds to make it more challenging for older kids or adults.  Plus is that is is also easy on the go!

The Floor is Lava – We actually had this game while the kiddos were younger, and my son loved to play it.  We would still have it but we slowly lost many of the pieces because I wasn’t too strict on when or where it was played. 

It really isn’t much more than colored pieces that you place on the floor, but what makes it fun is the  spinner someone can use to — as my son used to say — be the “says me guy” meaning the one who decides which blocks you can step on.  You could easily recreate this at home, but if you want the ease of packing it up and keeping it in your game closet its great!

Dinosaur Escape Game – This one has overall really good ratings, and looks great for kiddos age 4+.  

Baby Dino escape game – this one also great reviews, for age 4+, looks easy to learn and fun.

Adventure Games – The Volcanic Island – I honestly want to try this one myself!  It’s sort of like an escape game/a choose your own adventure book.  It comes highly rated and would be a lot of fun to play with older kids.  Let me know if you try it!

A volcano and Dino play set – if you have extra little ones at home this would be a fun toy to help them feel involved too!

Whatever you decide to do will be wonderful! You know your family best and what will interest them. The important part is to play together and spend quality time together.

PART 2: READ

Why Read | Our Books | Other Books

Why Read?

Reading reading reading reading!  I don’t know about you guys, but I just really want to instill in my children a love for books. 

We know there are tons of benefits to reading aloud with your kids and because we want to expose our kids to as many books as possible you will usually find reading a big part of our family unit studies. 

What seems to work for us right now is to buy a few must have books online ahead of time.

These are the books that we want to add to our library (especially if we it’s a topic the kiddos are really interested in).

Then we also make a visit to the library if it fits in our schedule and check out a few books on our topic (this is a great way to let the kids have a choice in the reading material as well). 

Since our “unit studies” take about 1 week right now we simply read the books throughout the week. This can be during bedtime snuggles or morning routie, just whenever it works for you.

In addition, we will usually set aside a short time block once per week to set up a fort and read together as a family.

Our Volcano Books

Here are the 3 books we purchased for our volcano study. We also included an audiobook.

1. Volcanoes (Smithsonian)
2. Volcanoes (National Geographic)
3. Live or Die? Surviving Real-Life Disasters
4. Magic Treehouse Book 13 – Vacation under a Volcano

In hindsight, we didn’t need both the Smithsonian and Nat Geo book – they were very similar. The benefit was being able to let each kid have one in their room for the week.

Our kids particularly enjoyed the magic treehouse book. We have an audible account and this book came in a group of 10 in the series for 1 credit which I thought was a great price. My son has been listening to all of the magic treehouse books and can’t wait to hear more. If you don’t use audible, you can usually easily access this book at most libraries too!

Additional Books

I Survived Pompeii and I Survived Mt. St. Helens – my daughter really enjoys the books in te series and I would recommend it!

The Princess & the Warrior – this is a retelling of a Mexican legend, a tale of two volcanoes. I LOVE the idea of bringing some culture and history into a unit study.

The Accidental Volcano – This one actually comes from a popular kids podcast called The Alien Adventures of Finn Caspian. I haven’t personally listened in to it, but have had a few friends recommend it. This is a book they’ve released and it comes with good reviews. It sounds like it’s a lot of fun to read aloud.

Pop-Up Volcano – this one just looks fun for kids because of the pop up pictures. I’m sure it’ll help bring the facts to life for kiddos.

Library – head to your local library and you’re sure to find a lot of volcanic gems!

PART 3: WATCH

Why Watch | Our Videos | Additional Ideas

Why Watch

Rather than using screens as a distraction, let’s show our kids that there can be more to T.V. than just mindless entertainment!

There are so many good volcano documentaries available and the best part is that most of them are fun for both kids and adults to watch!

Embrace the experience together and enjoy learning something entirely new.

Our Videos

• Weird but True: The Volcano Science Fair Showdown – We have a subscription on Disney+ which includes all the weird but true episodes. I think you can also purchase episodes online. Our kids LOVE watching Weird but True – it’s a great mix of fun with facts and exploration. I would highly recommend this!!
• The Silent Roar (Welcome to Earth, episode 1) – this is also on Disney+, Nick and I enjoyed the whole series back when it came out but rewatched this one with the kids because it included some cool volcanic footage!

Additional Ideas

Surviving the Mount St. Helens Disaster – available on Disney+ or similar documentaries are on prime or even youtube! Though we didn’t watch this show with our kids, we did watch it about a year ago and I remember it being fascinating!

Pompeii, Secrets of the Dead – This is also on Disney + (with similar documentaries on youtube & or prime). Nick and I have also watch this one and it was very well done and I would recommend it.

Fire of Love – A documentary chronicling two Volcanologists who built their life together studying volcanoes & died in an eruption back in 1991. I would like to see this one when I have some time.

Into the Inferno – available on Netflix. We haven’t seen this one!

Fire & Iceland – exploring icelands volcanoes.

PART 4: EXPERIENCE

Why experience | Our Videos | Additional Ideas

Hands on experience is honestly one of the best parts of any unit study. Pick a science project (in the case of volcanoes that was an easy one!) or a craft or something in between. Use this time to help boost creativity, critical thinking, and engagement with the topic. In addition, everyone can “learn by doing” together!

PART 5: EXPLORE

Why experience | Our Videos | Additional Ideas

Part 5: Exploration

This part can be as easy or as adventurous as you want it to be. Generally, it means going out to actually experience and explore a topic in real life. Where does it exist, is it possible to go there? Can we explore this topic in the real world? Of course, that isn’t always possible so I’ll always have a backup plan usually involving getting outdoors.