Plotting Her Own Course

My 11yo has just finished listening to Surviving the Applewhites by Stephanie S. Tolan. It was a fantastic book for my homeschooling middle schooler! One of the main characters is homeschooled and her approach to creating her own unit studies inspired my daughter to want to try her own.

In deciding on a unit study, we took a closer look at what we are already involved with.  Lately, I've been working hard on my gardens and my daughter has been fascinated with flowers. A unit study on flowers seems appropriate. Up to now, she's been pressing flowers and drying them in silica gel to preserve them. She wants to add photographs of the flower before preservation to the project

We haven't mapped out the entire project yet, but some areas of study we are considering are:

• History: look up the origin of the flower and any folklore that may be associated with it.
• Science: study the parts of flowering plants. 
• Art Appreciation: Georgia O'Keeffe, Claude Monet, and Van Gogh's use of flowers in their paintings. 
• Latin: the scientific names for the flowers and the meanings behind them. 
• Math: Fibonacci in nature.
• Literature: poems of flowers. 
• Geography: The state flowers of all fifty states. 

What would you include in a unit study of flowers? Have you ever developed your own unit study?