Our Vikings Unit study was the perfect first unit for our 2025-2026 school year. In short, it was engaging, comprehensive, and enjoyable for everyone. Plus, we all learned a ton about famous Vikings, their culture, their ships, and more!
If you’ve been hanging around here for a while, you know I love using unit studies with my kids. They keep us all engaged and let me set learning free from the boring workbook grind. Well, I guess that’s only part of it. The more honest answer is that unit studies allow me to keep my sanity and my boys’ sanity. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ll dive into why we specifically chose unit studies a little later in this post.
This Vikings Unit Study was such a fun way to let the kids’ curiosity run wild while still covering important subjects like social studies, language arts, and even a bit of critical thinking.
The Vikings are such an exciting topic—between the longships, famous Viking explorers like Leif Eriksson, and the comprehensive exploration of Norse mythology, my kids were hooked. This unit was a great mix of reading passages, interactive notebooks, and engaging activities, making it easy for me to use with multiple ages. Which leads me right into discussing what a unit study actually is!`
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What are Unit Studies
If you’re new to homeschooling or just curious, a unit study is basically a thematic unit where all your subjects are around a specific theme or topic. Instead of separate, disconnected lessons, you weave everything into the same theme.
In the case of our Viking unit, we covered:
- Art
- Bible
- Geography
- Grammar
- History
- Language Arts
- Math
- Science
- Social Studies
- Home Economics
These were all covered through the scope of the historical Vikings. A lot of this was done through our Student Notebooks with Gather ‘Round Homeschool. Inside the Student Notebooks are activities and worksheets that go ‘deeper’ into the subject matter. We also did hands-on activities and field trips that reinforced the lessons.
One of the things that I loved about the Student Books is that the first page is meant to be done while the students listen to the lesson. Often, there is coloring and more ‘busy work’ type items, but it keeps my boys’ hands active while I’m reading the lesson!
What is Gather Round Unit Studies
Before we can continue, I need to touch on what unit studies we are using for our 2025-2026 school year! I’ll give a brief overview here, but if you want to go deeper into what I have planned for our school year with Gather ‘Round Unit Studies, you can see that blog post here. I also go fully into my review on Gather ‘Round in this post from last school year.
Gather Round Homeschool Unit Studies are a popular option for family-style learning. They create complete unit bundles in both printed and PDF formats that you can use in the classroom or at home. Each unit comes with a Teacher’s Guide and a variety of age-level Student books (notebooking pages). That’s the bare minimum; however, many of their units also come with seatwork books, MP3 lesson options, posters, notecards, and lots of free resources over in their Gather ‘Round App. The free resources over on the app even come with recommended book lists and printable recitation pages! Honestly, there is so much that I couldn’t even try to list everything out.
Right now, our family is using the Pre-Reader and Early Reader student notebooks.
Gather ‘Round is designed for families learning together, so you can use the full unit with kids in preschool through high school, which is awesome if you have a wide age spread like I do. Technically, I think most people recommend the full units for 1st grade through high school, but I modify the content so we can use it with my preschooler and kindergartener as well.
Plus, since they’re an instant download a PDF format, you can get started right away if you are inspired to do your own unit study! Gather ‘Round also has printable options. I use a variety of both depending on my workload during a given unit. One of the nice things about the instant download is that the digital option comes with ALL the Student Workbook Levels. Which means if you want to repeat the unit in the future when your kids are older, you would have all the levels without purchasing new books.
Why Unit Studies For Our Family?
So why did we choose unit studies or even this specific unit study to start our year? The answer to that is probably deeper than I can adequately cover in a short section. I will try to be brief, but also cover the scope of our ‘why’.
In my opinion, unit studies and family learning (I’ll clump them together in this instance) cater to my boys’ style of learning and their natural curiosity. Before transitioning to unit studies and family-style learning, we were taking an approach that was more classical and Charlotte Mason-inspired. Not a bad approach, but it was not nurturing a love of learning in our home.
Unit studies allow my older boys to pick what they are interested in learning about and give them ‘charge’ of their learning. I have found that for my boys, this is an irreplaceable part of their education right now.
Last year, when I laid out all our options, the first unit that both Wyatt and West gravitated toward was the Vikings cover. They were ecstatic about the idea, and just like that Vikings became our first unit study for our school year.
My Vikings Unit Study Review
Now let’s get on to the actual review! The Vikings Unit Study was honestly so much fun. My kids loved the Viking adventure feel, from learning about Viking settlements and culture to hearing about the exciting lives of Vikings on the open seas. The informational text selections were a good balance of detailed information and kid-friendly writing, and even my younger ones could follow along.
Of course, a preschooler is more interested in scribbling and shouting, but as I’ve said before, he refuses to be left out of our homeschool time, so I indulge his curiosity, and I’ve been amazed at what he picks up on without me doing any formal work with him.
Each lesson contained a short story about a Viking or English leader or situation, extended teaching, and a family devotional. The lessons were also taught through a Biblical worldview, so everything pointed toward our Christian faith.
Something I didn’t pick up on until the unit was almost over is that the teaching time is color-coded for age levels. Only certain sections were necessary to read for my age level. This would have been abundantly helpful to realize at the beginning, so I recommend you read Rebecca Spooner’s (the writer) intro in its entirety before you start!
Teachers Guide
There is no doubt that the teacher’s guide is top-notch. Rebecca Spooner did an amazing job researching and summarizing it in a multiple-age-level way. It’s fantastic. In fact, she’s teaching it this year in the Gather ‘Round Online Academy. If you are new to Gather ‘Round, it might be a fun thing to check out.
I love that each lesson contains a family devotional, which is really the highlight of each Gather ‘Round unit for me. She weaves faith into the lesson in a seamless way that helps children think about their faith through the scope of the lesson that was taught.
There are 20 lessons in this full unit that cover 793AD-1066AD and include characters like Alfred the Great, Leif Eriksson, Thorfinn Karlsefni, Canute the Great, Harald Hardrada, and more. You will also learn about the Viking culture, Viking women, weapons (my kids’ favorite), and the explorations and conquests of the Vikings. Norse myths are covered, but the text covers them in a way that points back to Christ.
A personal favorite part was seeing how the influences of Norse myths connected to modern literature and even popular movies like “How to Train Your Dragon”.
As a review of all we learned, I created this Vikings Riddle Bingo! It can be used as just a fun review for little kids by using just the images to create Bingo. Or you can level it up for older children and use the riddle element.
Student Notebooks
The student notebooks by Gather ‘Round are broken up into these age levels:
- Pre-Reader
- Early Reader
- Early Elementary
- Upper Elementary
- Middle School
- High School
My preschooler and kindergartener did the pre-reader, and my 2nd grader did the Early Reader. Overall, I thought the Student Notebooks were wonderfully done. I wish the first page in the Early Reader had more coloring because my 2nd grader needed more hands-on help on the first page, as it was more advanced. That ended up interrupting our reading time often enough that I eventually let him color in this Vikings Coloring book or History of Swords coloring book.
Viking Lapbook
One of the fun things we did alongside this unit was to create a Viking lapbook. It included foldables like a flap Viking longhouse, mini-books about Norse gods, and even timeline figures for the Viking Age.
I debated heavily about whether this was a project that I wanted to take on with our kids so young. The only thing that was far too advanced for them was constructing the timeline. The construction of the timeline was physically too advanced for them, plus the comprehension of a historical timeline was beyond their age levels. I ended up using our History of the World Timeline with my 2nd grader and showing him at what point in history the Vikings landed. That helped him a lot to understand the Vikings in terms of world history.
The lapbook was one of my favorite parts of this unit and was wonderful for review. It did take a lot of time with all the cutting, and although I don’t regret doing it, I am also relieved we can use that time for other educational endeavors now!
What I Would Change
Overall, I really enjoyed this complete Viking unit, but if I had to tweak anything, it would be the pacing and the amount of busy work. There’s a lot of detailed information, and if you don’t carve out lots of time, it can feel a little overwhelming. I added a LOT of other things into this unit, which we will talk about in a bit, but I think instead of five weeks, I could have taken at least 7 weeks to cover everything!
I also recommend reviewing the student workbooks each day and possibly choosing to eliminate or tweak anything that is too much ‘busy work’ for your family. We didn’t do the short story project that is recommended, which would have also taken more time.
That said, I still think this is one of the best resources for a Vikings unit study I’ve ever found!
Additional Resources – Viking Figures, Read Aloud Books, Field Trips
There are so many extras that we did, I’m not going to remember them all! One of our favorite lessons was lesson 2, which covered the difference between merchant and warships. With their grandparents, our boys constructed their very own merchant ship! It was incredible and an amazing way to reinforce all they had learned.
The shipbuilding also inspired our trip to the Runestone Museum in Alexandria, Minnesota. The museum has lots of Viking artifacts, including a Runestone and a merchant Viking ship! It was honestly the best county museum that I’ve ever been to! We were also able to watch a real blacksmith and a person use a loom and separate wool, both of which were parts of the Viking unit. That experience was at Forest City Stockade, which was not specific to Vikings (completely wrong historical time, actually), but some of the exhibits were relevant to what we were studying!
Some additional Viking resources we used included:
- Vikings Coloring Book
- Sword History Coloring Book
- Paper Swords and Shields
- Raiders from the Sea (Read-Aloud)
- How to Train Your Dragon Figures (a favorite with my boys)
- Vikings Pop-Up Board Book (amazing book!)
- National Geographic Informational Book
- Bible Handwriting Copy Work (included the Bible verse recitation for the unit)
- All About Vikings National Geographic
If you want to hear it from someone besides me, Family Style Learning on YouTube actually went to Norway after doing their Vikings unit study. You can watch her experience and my family experience below.
The Real Review – Was It Worth It?
The Gather ‘Round Curriculum was absolutely worth it. It was the perfect unit to start our school year with. There was excitement around the subject, and I’m so glad I let my kids steer the ship on our first study of the school year.
It had just the right mix of history, stories, hands-on projects, and those little “aha!” moments that remind me why we homeschool in the first place. My kids were engaged, asking questions, and making connections, and I loved watching their confidence grow as they explored something new. If you’re on the fence about trying a unit study, let me encourage you, sometimes, the best learning happens when we set aside the rigid checklists and just dive into a topic together. This was more than just a history lesson; it was a family adventure that sparked curiosity and created memories. And honestly? That’s the kind of learning that sticks.
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