The Learn + Live Letter unit studies are intentionally made for parents who want to take a hands-on approach to homeschooling—this is not a print-and-go curriculum. While we do encourage interest-led learning and our lessons are not scripted so you can adopt your own teaching style, our program is made to be parent-directed. We encourage you to facilitate, discuss, and participate in the lessons together as you continue to strengthen your connection through homeschool.
Some lessons will naturally lead to free play that won’t necessarily include parents’ involvement—and that, of course, is intentional! The lessons require 10-30 minutes of preparation each week, which may include printing materials, preparing for STEM projects and experiments, and collecting books and supplies.
The homeschool unit studies found in the Learn + Live Letter are broken up by level for children ages 3 to 12. Click here to learn more about our levels to determine which one is right for your child! Our unit studies can also be used for family-style homeschooling. Levels 1 + 2 share the same theme topics, and Level 2+ includes modifications for younger siblings. Level 3 can be used with a wide range of ages (7-12) over a period of 2-3 years. It is especially suited to group learning.
All memberships have access to every level so you can choose the activities that best suit your child’s current needs and abilities.
Nope! We designed our program to be entirely inclusive regardless of religion, culture, or holidays celebrated. The units are designed to be natural springboards so you can introduce your family’s personal values and beliefs through a variety of topics. The sources used are all secular as defined by SEA.
While no two unit studies are exactly alike, many of our units begin with reading a book (or several books!) and watching brief docu-clips about the unit theme. From there, we bring the topic to life through hands-on experiments, projects, crafts, and multimedia activities that engage their senses and inspire deeper curiosity. Our themes take a different approach from many other unit study programs because, on top of being fun to participate in, our activities teach science, geography, history, math, phonetic awareness, and writing readiness, music theory, composer study, artist study and arts and crafts in a creative and gentle way that works with your child’s natural learning development.
Your membership provides you access to our unit studies much like a gym membership provides you access to classes. The unit studies live on our website, and you have access to them as long as your membership is active. The units themselves are not available for download. Once your membership is over, your access ends as well.
By keeping the units live on our website, we are able to provide and maintain links to a variety of multimedia sources you will incorporate into each lesson. We can also add and update new books as they are published and remove older resources, if necessary. Unlike a static PDF, which becomes outdated quickly, we always want to give our members the most accurate and current resources.
It can be! Although we provide a seasonal schedule that you can stick to, we encourage parents to follow their child’s lead as much as they want. This means you can choose the unit you want to focus on on any given week or the lessons you do (or don’t do!) within those units. Since our levels are not journey-based, each unit works as a stand alone study—meaning you can jump into or out of any unit whenever you want. We have designed our curriculum with this level of flexibility so you can continue homeschooling with a child-led approach, if desired.
Our units are made to be parent-directed. We write the lessons to you, the grown-up. We encourage parents to be involved in facilitating the lessons, but some lessons and activities can be easily assigned and child-led. In other words, you probably don’t have to be there the whole time.
It is our hope to encourage conversations about the readings, videos, and topics to strengthen critical thinking skills and reading comprehension. With that said, some families decide that older students can work independently—children do their own reading, research, experiments, STEM activities, writing, and projects. In these cases, we suggest using the trackers to keep a record of what lessons your child is working on so these conversations can be had later to see what the child is retaining and what has made an impression. As always, do what works for your family!
Our activities support writing readiness by strengthening letter recognition and developing the fine motor skills needed to correctly hold a pencil. As children progress in the levels, lessons include copywork, list-making, writing notes and sentences, and storytelling as writing practice. Students in Level 3 will learn about different writing styles such as narrative, descriptive, persuasive, compare and contrast, research, and creative writing. For the full Scope + Sequence of all our levels, click here.
Each day of lessons from Levels 1, 2, and 2+ can take anywhere from 20 to 90 minutes, depending on your child’s level of engagement. We will also occasionally recommend additional reading that can be done during bedtime story time and Montessori-inspired activities that can be incorporated into your daily routine. For Level 3, activities can be done on a daily basis or be grouped in a way that best suits your family’s rhythm. Lessons can take 2-4 hours a day depending on the activities your family chooses to do.
We also regularly suggest field trips that align with unit topics, which can be taken on days and times that work best with your family’s schedule.
The beauty of our program is that it is designed to fit into your life. While we provide enough lessons and activities that you could do something every day, it isn’t required or expected. Remember, you are the boss of your homeschool!
We strive to bring you a variety of approaches and styles of learning that could appeal to every child, but that doesn’t mean every single lesson will click with your child. If something isn’t working, skip it! If life gets away from you one day, don’t stress about forcing in a lesson. Regularly incorporating our hands-on learning is all it takes to see major educational growth (even if you miss a day (or a week) here and there).
Your membership is only for you and your household. Your log-in is tracked by our membership platform and will only allow the log-in to be used by a specific amount of devices. If you would like to share what you are learning with others, we have free sample lessons and several public activities on our blog that are available to anyone. We would love for you to share those!
We include a full supply list needed for every unit study we send out, but we highly recommend having these 20 basic school supplies on hand for Levels 1, 2, and 2+ and these 14 supplies for Level 3—it will vastly cut down on what you need to order each month!
The units in Levels 1, 2 and 2+ include many literacy activities as well as a phonics guide to help introduce letters and letter sounds. The units include many literacy games, early reading activities, as well as recommendations for learning site words. But, if your child is ready to begin formal reading lessons, we recommend folding a reading program into your lesson time. The program that we recommend (and have used with our own children!) is All About Reading. This simple-to-use program uses brief lessons and hands-on methods to teach your child to recognize phonogram and phonics rules to become a confident reader. Learn more about it here on their website!
Although Level 3 does fold in math application to almost every unit, upper elementary students will also need an additional math program. We recommend you use a program that best meets your child’s learning style but we love Right Start Math and ST Math.
We are glad you asked! Our lesson’s eclectic style borrows from the Charlotte Mason philosophy that children learn best from “living books.” (AKA, books written by one person who has/had a passion for the subject and writes in conversational or narrative style. In short, living books make the subject come alive!) Because of this, we incorporate at least three books into each unit. If you are trying to build your home library, know that we have only recommended books that we believe will add value to your child’s education today and also in the future.
But while we hope these books will grow right along with your family, we understand that not everyone is in a position to buy each book. Instead of buying, try reserving your books from your local library as soon as you receive your newsletter so that you can have them in time for your lessons. (Many libraries will even order books they don’t already own if you request them!) Many of the books are also available as e-books and can be borrowed from places like OpenLibrary.org. We also include links to YouTube read-aloud when available—we even have many of our own that you can view here.
We’re so sorry for the trouble! First, check your spam or promotions folder. Found it? Yay! (You can whitelist our email or add us as a contact to prevent this from happening in the future.) Still can’t find it? Email us at help@learnandliveletter.com, and we will be happy to assist you.
Welcome to the community! Your lessons live on our website. Click here to find your unit studies.
Your membership provides you with access to unit studies that are only available to you while you are a member. Because of this, we can’t offer a refund for the time that you have had access to our platform. You can, however, cancel your membership at any time if you no longer want to receive our newsletters or have access to our members-only unit studies.
We’re sorry to see you go! To cancel, be sure to be logged into your Learn + Live account. Click on Member Menu from the top menu choices. Next, click Your Account. Under Billing, click View or Cancel Plans>Cancel Subscription. Once you cancel, you will automatically receive a cancellation email.
Each level has at least 36 weeks of lessons―enough to keep you busy for a full “school year.” However, we strongly encourage you to take your time working through each unit and each level. We also encourage regular breaks as needed and to prevent burnout! As we will remind you often, you are the boss of your homeschool, so there is no need to rush through any of it.
Following your child’s lead will often take you down rabbit holes of learning through a variety of topics. Since each each level is created with a variety of ages and abilities in mind (with various upgrades and modifications built in), you will likely find you could stay within a single Level for more than one year. Additionally, Level 3 has 18 months of units designed with the idea that you can indulge your child’s interest with lessons in this level for up to three years. In all, the Learn + Live Letter could be your curriculum of choice from start to finish for up to seven years, depending how you choose to use it.
