Need a Multi Age Economics Curriculum & Government Study?
We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this review or post, but all opinions are our own.
Are you looking for a fast paced way to get Government & Economics covered in your homeschool. Maybe you would like a little more flexibility in your lesson plan to still cover your core subjects daily? Are you trying to cover material with multiple ages? A multi age Economics Curriculum and US Government can be covered in an easy to modify unit study. We found it to be the best approach for our family. With a multi age unit study we were able to get my teens credit requirements filled and include our elementary students too.
Are you combining multiple high schoolers into one class already?
I needed a multi age economics curriculum last year for my own family. My son was approaching his senior year and I knew we would need to teach Government and Economics before graduation.
Have you already combined your high school students? I have combined my three high school students for years. This group in particular, has worked together for the last several years. The group we developed was working well and helping each other in good ways. When my oldest approached 12th grade, I didn’t want to break up the team. The idea of a unit study grew out of the desire to keep working in a way that was working well for the whole group.
Also, I didn’t want to have to do Government and Economics for three years in a row. You can use the Government and Economics unit study to do it once. And do it well!
You Can Include ALL your learners in High Level Subjects
By teaching with a unit study, we could have the flexibility to add or take away from our weekly load. Have you considered teaching government to multi age learners? We touch on Government and money in the elementary years, so I can be done quite easily. We brought our younger children right along with a unit study for everyone.
In general, Govt’ & Econ is taught in the 12th grade. If you combine students, it may fall in the 12th grade for one student, but not all. Making our own unit study gave us the ability to choose what books we wanted to cover.
We streamlined our reading selections to those that fit the whole group for reading out loud. Then I assigned individual books according to reading level. This also gave us the ability to teach to a broader range of ages. Assigning age appropriate reading books also freed up time to watch more supplementary online content.
Speaking of online content; if you are working from home or away from the home for a portion of the school day, your teen can still keep working by assigning watchable content. This is one way I was able to keep working AND homeschooling. I will share more online resources later in this article.
Using the Best of Several Sources
We have used Sonlight Curriculum in the past, but it is a lot of reading. My most analytical son went through the full curriculum himself as a senior. After reading this the Idiot’s Guide to Government, he held it up and said, “You really could have skipped all the other book and had me read this one and we could have saved a lot of time.”
A story told in a thousand words can also be just as satisfying in two-hundred. (This is what I tell my youngest daughter who like to tell me about her latest dream for an hour) My last group of students are hands-on, and definitely visual learner scued. I knew that if I kept the full curriculum as-is, they would likely lose interest.
Since I was working part-time, I needed them to buy-in on the school year in a bad way.
So, I got creative about the books we had used in the past. To save more time, I decided to make it a study for all ages. This meant ditching some larger books to streamline the reading and including resources for our younger children as well. Your younger kids can sit in on reading and learn with you. If they are reading at the fifth grade level, I assign them reading books of their own.
Creating a Good Government Unit Study
For a unit study to work you need to choose a “SPINE” book that covers the material in depth. For government our two main textbooks are The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Government & Politics and Congress for Dummies. Both of these book are great at getting right to the point and covering what needs to be covered in a systematic fashion. The reading can be broken into smaller sized chunks of each book covering sixteen weeks, or larger reading selections from one book at a time for sixteen weeks depending on the needs of your reader
We scheduled one book at a time to help our students focus and continue working on other core subjects like Math and Science..
Relatable Economics for Teens
To complete the multi age economics curriculum of the Government unit study, our choice of spine reading books are Rich Dad, Poor Dad and Rich Dad Poor Dad for Teens. I chose these two books because they are a must read for yourself and your teen.
This is where the meat of meaningful homeschool economics discussions are going to come from. Robert T. Kiyosaki shares a wealth of wisdom about how to use money with forethought and intelligence. His work has stood the test of time and proved to be relevant in every market climate. As an economics leader, he has also shown that he practices what he teaches.
The companion homeschool economics readings are scheduled over the rest of the school year. The “Uncle Eric” Books from Blue Stocking Press are written in a conversational language that is easy for anyone to understand. They are presented as letters from a wise uncle who wishes to impart what he knows to the next generation. The material covered is not child fluff, it is deep factual teaching, but the presentation makes it easy to digest. To have your students show they are digesting what they are reading I suggest reading together and having a discussion after each chapter. The chapters are short and digestible.
You can also assign a reading notebook where the students can write a summary of each chapter as they read. They can add their questions and comments to report back each week.
The book titles in the Uncle Eric series are; The Money Mystery, Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? and Are You Liberal? Conservative? or Confused?
Character Building, Personal Growth and Bible
We rounded out the selections of reading with a few of my favorite personal growth and business authors. Much of the teaching of Government and Economics revolve around the themes of Personal Liberties, Rights and Common Good. The kind of character we have, maintain and develop affect those around us. Personal grown, fiscal responsibility and a growth mindset all contribute to positive changes in society.
Feel free to add your favorites too.
We included…
- John Maxwell – The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth
- Malcolm Gladwell – Outliers: The Story of Success
- Albert L. Winseman – Living Your Strengths (Strength Finders)
- Keller Papasan – The ONE Thing
I also like Brian Dixon’s Start With You People. Emily P. Freeman Do the Next Right Thing and anything by Jon Acuff!
Include Reading for the Whole Family
For the Younger Kids we bought the entire Tuttle Twins series. This series was crafted by Connor Boyack of the Libertas Institute. He is a personal freedom advocate and has a deep interest in teaching about liberty, free market systems and personal liberties. The series takes content originally written for adults and recreates it as an adventure for the Tuttle Twins. Conor’s books bring the complex concepts of markets, personal liberties and government to elementary age students with surprising relevance and accessibility.
The books include a note from the author of the original base work, a glossary of terms, discussion questions and an optional workbook with learning and fun activities. I was able to purchase a bundle with the activity books included. You can subscribe the Connor’s site for updates, sales and news.
Psst… They are hosting a BIG black Friday Sale where you can grab the bundle for 75% off! Grab it NOW!
Don’t Forget to Add Electives!
We also added the Cashflow for Kids Game from Rich Dad author, Kiyosaki. This is a fun game that teaches how money really works in the business world. Play and learn important lessons that you are already reading about in your school day.
Learn About Marketing and How the World Sells
Another fun addition to this study was the book about how advertising works and why you should know. It is called, Made You Look, by Shari Graydon and is a fully illustrated read for all ages. This book covers how companies often sell a negative image that only their product can correct. It is a great conversation starter and I highly recommend it.
Where Does Faith Play a Part on Gov & Econ?
You can’t present these deeply integral topics without including commentary of how they affect our worldview. The fact that we have a faith in the God of eternity plays a huge role in how we see the world and our role in it. We have to give our teen reading selections that help them formulate their own world view based on truth, research and the active work of the Holy Spirit.
To that end we added Money, Possessions, and Eternity: A Comprehensive Guide to What the Bible Says about Financial Stewardship, Generosity, Materialism, Retirement, Financial Planning, Gambling, Debt, and More a book by Randy Alcorn. He is the founder and director of Eternal Perspective Ministries, pastor, teacher and speaker.
God and Politics: Four Views on the Reformation of Civil Government : Theonomy, Principled Pluralism, Christian America, National Confessionalism by Gary Scott Smith helps navigate questions about how government should serve the people with a Biblical foundation at the core.
These books rounded out our study and gave us the flexibility to have great discussions once a week around the topics in our main text. We also included Current Events for all of the students. They were required to share about three news events each week. These could be logged in their journal, notebook or presented orally in our discussion time.
Connecting All The Readers and Topics
We also read the Tuttle Twin Books aloud or assigned them to the older elementary students with the workbook activities each week. I read many of the books and papers that were the inspiration for the Tuttle Twin books series, while the kids read the Tuttle Twin version.
Not only did reading parallel books help us all learn together, but this is also one way to show your kids that we are all learning. We both know that, learning never stops even when school ends.
I hope you find these suggestions helpful for creating your own multi age Economics and Government Unit Study for your homeschool. If you would like a ready list of resources you can click this link to my amazon list where all the books are listed in one place for you. If you make a purchase from amazon with the link I do make a small affiliate reward. This does not affect your price, but it does help make it purposeful to continue to write on these topics and share with you.
Thank you for reading and happy learning!
Amber
