"The Wood Between The Worlds"

Welcome to the unit I have been looking forward to the whole year long! This one is a much longer unit than our usual units. I wanted to have it go over November and December, because typically those are both filled with holiday activities that cause us to have less time to focus on unit studies. But as I developed the curriculum for this unit, I realized I would have to do the January one I had planned some other time and let this one go into January, and February. We'll see if it goes into March. At this point, it most likely will.


What unit study could possibly be taking up quite so much time, you ask??

 NARNIA!


I did a lot of research for this, mainly reading about the creator of this world, C.S. Lewis himself.
I really enjoyed learning about his life and his imagination for this world. I looked up anything I could find on him in the library database and placed on a hold anything I thought looked interesting. It all came in really quickly.

I actually started this blogpost in November, at the start of our Narnia unit, but then blogger "broke" on me and I couldn't figure out how to post anything on here for a while. Until mid-February. But we are still working through the books, so it is still relevant. There are 7 books in the series. we are on our 4th book. It has been slow going, too, with all the holiday stuff. And at the end of this month we are starting back up with the home-school co-op, the spring term.
I have Really enjoyed reading through these books.

This is a set of the novels I found at a garage sale for $8 and gave to my son to read, which he didn't, which allowed me to introduce them at the start of our unit. Despite being a bit old, they are in really good shape, probably haven't been read.

 Here are all the books I got from the library about C.S. Lewis, and Narnia.

I really enjoyed learning all about "Jack", as he referred to himself. This is a fascinating, and well written biography.

This is just a collection of letters "Jack" wrote in response to fan mail from children. He was devoted to writing a personal letter back to each one he received. I read a lot of them to my kids, who also enjoyed it. 

 This is the set of theatrical abridged, audio books of the whole series I got brand-new, never-been-used, still-in-the-plastic-wrapping, from an estate sale also this last summer, for I think $5. The voices are fun and the kids have loved listening to them.

As you can see, they are in the chronological order of Narnia, rather than the common order in which they were produced.

Here is the curriculum I received from a fellow home schooling mother from my co-op, to borrow, and return when we're done.

It is a complete, year long unit that includes all subjects, mainly focusing on literature, and aimed at grades 4 and up.

It is very involved. Overwhelming, actually. Since I always customize my own curriculum, I only gleaned some stuff from it, rather than follow it exactly.

I enjoyed the crossword puzzles they had in the end of every chapter. Each chapter in this covers one of the books in the series.

How I ended up doing the lesson is :
First we learned a little about 'Jack' Lewis, by reading the short biography in the front of this book ROAR

and hearing some of the letters he wrote to the children fans. Then we listened to the story, a few chapters at a time, on the audio books, starting chronologically, starting with The Magician's Nephew, and then read the pages about each chapter in the ROAR book, which has one double page per chapter, including a vocab list of unfamiliar words and their definitions, a summary of the basic plot of the chapter, a comparison to the Bible and our daily lives, and then some questions, like a  quiz, about what they learned so far, and questions to help ponder how they would feel in the situations. It is a great book for what we are doing.

I also have the books in hand while going through ROAR, to reread some passages for reminders, and also because the audio books are abridged, so some details might be left out.
Then, we do some small activity involved with learning about that era in history, or what the children in the book might have gone through. I pulled a lot of ideas from the "Further Up and Further In" book. We do this about once a week. Mainly the kids love to water color paint about their favorite parts of the chapters. At the end of the ROAR book, there is an exam that reviews and quizzes the students about all the chapters, characters, creatures, etc, and helps them recall the details of the books.

We all are learning so much about all kinds of things, from Biblical perspectives, to 1940's English culture, to what goes on in battles, etc. It has been educational for both students and teacher, alike.

After the series has been read through, we will watch the movies. My kids have already seen the 3 that were made recently, but it is always nice to review.

 I also may introduce them to the 80's BBC versions

They are the same books made into movies, plus The Silver Chair, which were remade recently. It is the story in the order in which they were written and produced by Lewis, but not in the order of the history of Narnia, which is how we have been reading them.

Well, I hope this blog inspires you to form a unit study out of whatever you love and your children/students love, that might educate you and them as you delve deeper. I have really been growing through diving into the world of Narnia. Come "a little further up and further in" to the world of learning!