Charlotte's Web and Spiders: Exploring a Unit Study from Homeschool Complete {Curriculum Review}

We are a family with experience in Unit Studies. I’ve learned over the years that we enjoy the freedom they give to explore topics over a wide range of subjects. Over the last several weeks, we have been reviewing the Spider study in the Unit Studies collection from Homeschool Complete. I picked this topic because it was about something my youngest son (age 8) loved to learn about, and looked forward to a whole unit study revolving around it. Did the unit study live up to our expectations? Was this another company that we would continue to use for further unit studies? Today, I’m going to be sharing my review with you to answer these very questions!

About Homeschool Complete

Homeschool Complete offers a wide variety of curriculum options from complete online curriculum for grades K-4 to a collection of unit studies for grades K-6. The online program is all inclusive, literature based, and a year long.  Each lesson plan is created around thematic units with a biblical worldview. Even though the
program is online, it is designed to be a unit-study curriculum to make teaching more effective, and to help increase a child’s comprehension. The curriculum covers the subjects of Language Arts, Math, Social Studies, Science, Fine Arts, Physical Development, Fitness, Character Development, and Bible! These are available for ages Kindergarten thru Fourth grade.

Homeschool Complete also offers a collection of unit studies, which are written in the same format as the online complete curriculum (also literature based), for grades K-6. The unit studies are designed to take one to three weeks to complete, and include the subjects Math, Social Studies, Science, Fine Arts, Physical Development, Fitness, Character Development, and Bible. The Unit Studies are separated by grade with studies for grades K-2 and grades 3-6. Each unit study is clearly marked as to its suggested length of time.

The unit studies include the topics of:

Ants
John Adams
Spiders
Parks
U.S. Symbols
Pioneers
Asia
Seasons
Johnny Appleseed
Colonies
and more!

The unit studies are available in print or digital form.

We were given the Unit Studies: Spiders (grade 3-4) in print to review with my 8 year old.

Our Thoughts on the Product

We received the print copy of the Spiders unit study and opened it right up to see how it was laid out. I was rather surprised at a lot of the material as it covered extremely basic things for the math and daily activities. EXTREMELY. Not something I would consider to be for the third-fourth grade level it was listed as.

Learning your address? Saying a pledge of allegiance? Basic cursive? Identifying nouns? Learning the date and days of the week/months of the year? Making patterns? Basic skip counting? Telling time?

Not a single one of those is something learned in third/fourth grade. Those are easily K-2 skills. Every one of them.

Thanks to the handy dandy skills list at the front, I was able to quickly work through all the skills to be covered in the unit study, and I simply started highlighting the ones that I thought we actually needed to go over.

Skills List

Next in the book was a very useful Materials list. It was separated by weekly materials and by lesson. I quickly noticed that there were two books on the list for every lesson—Charlotte’s Web and The Great Shelby Holmes. I went to the library and snagged a copy of Charlotte’s Web, but since they didn’t have the other book, I just skipped it.

Next in the packet were some reusable printouts like a calendar, Hundred Chart-Number Line, Spelling squares, and other things like that. Because I didn’t plan on doing any of these things (they were the super basic things we already know), I just skipped forward.

The lessons are clearly marked and begin by noting the skills to be covered and materials needed. They then are separated by daily items, and then into subjects. If there are worksheets to be used, they are directly following the lessons and clearly marked. The lessons include any answer keys needed.

Lesson things I want to do are highlighted

Chosen Activities Highlighted

Because so many of the skills were things we’ve already got down, I just took my highlighter and worked through each lesson, highlighting the things I actually wanted to do; most of these centered on anything relating to the literature assignments for Charlotte’s Web. We did most of the assignments that were related to the book. We also did most of the assignments relating to science. Because he loves math, my youngest also requested to do most of the math assignments, even though they were so easy --although he did learn about Roman Numerals which was new to him.

The assignments we did relating to the book included simple comprehension questions about the story, vocabulary review and definitions, pronoun practice, foreshadowing, writing webs, character assessment, plot sequence, and more!

Most of the worksheet work was related to the book, so we ended up doing most all of the worksheet materials.

graphing work

The science topics were basic information about spiders, weather, pendulums, the senses, and more. We identified the parts of a spider’s leg, explored web design, learned about pendulums, did some experiments, and more.

Testing Pendulums

Recording results

When we were done with the unit, we watched the old animated version of Charlotte’s Web and compared and contrasted it to the book.

Because of our busy schedule, I didn’t have time to do the art projects, but we did enjoy “eating” spiders and playing “Toss the Bugs in the Web”—both of which are activities included in the unit study.

So, what are our overall thoughts?

This is definitely an in depth unit study. It is clearly laid out and very user friendly. All the worksheets that you need are included in the lessons and are easy to store in a binder. Most of the materials are easily found in your home and you always know what you need in advance. Each of the subjects are full of a range of projects and activities for your children to do. There is enough there, that you CAN pick and choose what you want—OR you could use it in entirety.  If you did each lesson in its entirety, you would EASILY have a full school day.

Using the book to help figure out his crossword

The main book, Charlotte’s Web, is easily accessible which is nice. In fact, because my son got the flu part way through the review, I actually found a free audiobook version read by the author E.B. White that he was able to listen to when he was too sick to read. This was actually an excellent option for him and would be a great suggestion for anyone who may not have the “time” to read the book on their own.

The secondary book, The Great Shelby Holmes, was not. I could have purchased it, but chose not to for this review. The literature questions were all related to Charlotte’s Web, so I just focused on that.

We LOVED reading the book and doing all the activities relating to it—and finishing with watching the movie was just icing on the cake.

Now—let me say this. Because this unit study was called “spiders,” I expected it to be predominately related TO spiders. But it wasn’t. I think it could have been better called simply Charlotte’s Web. 90% of the material was related to the book, not the topic of spiders. The actual material about spiders was maybe 15%. It’s an EXCELLENT unit study, but truly the BOOK is the main unit and studying spiders is simply a fun rabbit trail. My son said he loved the book, but really wished there had been actually more stuff related to learning about spiders.

Another thing is that this really was a mixed bag of activities. Some of them—a LOT of them—were simply wayyyy too basic. Things I expected in a first grade level, not a third/fourth grade. Other things were advanced like the three and four syllable vocabulary words and definitions the students were learning. Words that most third and fourth graders will only ever come across IN literature of an advanced level (injustice, stealthily, objectionable, swathes, unremitting, untenable, oblige, sedentary, idiosyncrasy, ect). So the grade level suggestion of this unit study is iffy. I would adjust the daily activities that are more lower level, be brought up to what would be expected of a third/fourth grader.

So, would I recommend this unit study?

Yes, I would—because it is EASY TO ADJUST to however you need. One thing about Unit Studies is that you sort of buffet it—taking what you want, leaving what you don’t. I would especially recommend it for a literature study for Charlotte’s Web for this age range—this IS a literature based unit study. You could do it with multiple students very easily. I also think that this could EASILY be spaced out for someone who wants to do it more slowly--there is a LOT of information in each lesson, and although it's intended to be a two week unit study, you could choose to do it just a few times a week and space it out more.

Want to Know More About Homeschool Complete?

For the last several weeks, we have been working through the Spiders study from the Unit Studies by Homeschool Complete. You have read our comments, but I encourage you to explore what the other review members thought--especially those who used the online complete curriculum.

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