History Lesson

We are studying the Middle Ages this year. It is so much fun for it is full of castles and knights, and classic stories I have been wanting to read to my boys for years like Robin Hood and the Story of King Arthur. There is so much out there to make this year wonderful it was truly hard to pick and choose for fear something fun will be left out. See my pinterest board on the Middle Ages/Renaissance. My saving grace was the spine, Story of the Middle Ages by Christine Miller and Passport to the Middle Ages a hands on trip through this historical period by Homeschool in the woods. Between these to resources I have just what I need to flesh out the middle ages time period with fun activities, great books and with more ease and peace of mind than I first thought was possible.

Apparently we have the old out dated cover image. If you checked out the link to The Story of the Middle Ages you can see that it has been redone. I think I like our old version better. One of the best aspects of this book is the suggested book list in the back. It suggests living books that fit in with the story of the Middle Ages narrative. It also give you an idea just where they go in the flow of the historical story. So by using this suggested book list I was able gather together relevant living books and plan them out with the spine readings, and with the help of the SCM panner, I know it will all fit into the school year. Yeah!

Below is a portion of my master list of books and where they fit into the spine. I have not stuck to the 20 minute lessons here as my boys can absorb more so my readings are a bit lengthy. It is working for us but it may not work for you. See for yourself, maybe you can do more. :) I also supplement with audio books when I need a break. See my other post on the ones I found for free at Librivox.

SOTMA: Europe Long Ago-Ceasar in Gaul and Britain (one lesson)

SOTMA: Europe under the Romans-The 1st Martyrs (one lesson)

In God's Garden by Amy Steedman(7 lessons/days)*

SOTMA: The Patron Saint of France- The Early Germans (one lesson)

Children of Odin by Padraic Colum (portions of it in 3 lessons)

SOTMA: How the Franks Came into Gaul-The first Kings (one lesson)

The White Stag by Kate Seredy(two lessons)

SOTMA: Theodoric and Ostrogoth-The Bishop of Ireland (one lesson)

Our Island Saints by Amy Steedman chapter on St. Patrick begin lap book (two lessons)

Lantern bearer by Rosemary Sutcliff (11 lessons)

SOTMA: The Anglo Saxons-King Arthur (one lesson)

King Arthur by Howard Pyle (five lessons)

SOTMA:  The story of St. Augustine (one lesson)

Augustine came to Kent by Barbara Willard (six lessons)

* If the book has 14 chapters in it like In God's Garden, it will take 7 lessons/days to complete the book if I can read two chapters/saint stories a day. Some books will be shorter or longer so the days it will take to read each one is different. 

Following is the rest of the list of living books we plan to use for History.  

Son of Charlemagne by Barbara Willard

Story of Roland for Children by H.E. Marshall

Castle by David MaCaulay

DK: Castle at War 

Castle Diary by Richard Platt

Vikings by Janeway

The Story of Rolf and the Viking Bow by Allen French

The Viking adventure by Clyde Robert Bulla

Leif the Lucky by Ingri and Edgar D'Aulaire

Dragon and the Raven by G.A. Henty

Illuminations by Hunt

Little Duke by Charlotte M. Yonge

Cathedral by David MaCaulay

If All The Swords in England by Barbara Willard

God's Troubadour by 

Winning His Spurs by G. A. Henty

Magna Charta by James Daugherty

In Freedom's Cause by G.A. henry

Otto if the Silver Hand by Howard Pyle

The Apple and the Arrow by Mary and Conrad Buff

The Door in the Wall by

St. George for England by G. A. Henty

Canterbury Tales by Barbara Cohen Illustrated by Trina Hyman (a favorite illustrator of mine)

Joan of Arc by Diane Stanley

You may have observed as you read through the list that some classic books noted to be good for this time period like Robin Hood and Adam of the Road are missing. I have scheduled them into our literature readings instead of our history lesson and they should correspond also with the flow of history as it moves through time in the middle ages. 

Passport through the Middle Ages is something we do on project day which is the last day of our week. Project day was instigated last year because we love hands on activities but we also value the simplicity of Charlotte Mason's methods. One thing I wanted to make time for in our school week was to include more living books to fill them with ideas, "a banquet of mind food", and I also wanted to limit our hands-on work so we could practice narration which stimulates the mind to work on the ideas gained instead of and activity which may or may not accomplish this. So Project day is the sixth day in our week and it is where we do the fun activities, games etc. that we enjoy without losing the great advantage of sticking closely to a CM method during the week.

This is TJ's notebook where he keeps his passport notebooking type activities. 

Sample of one of their notebooking pages describing the different class levels in the Middle Ages. 

The boys also keep up a time line as we go along.

The boys write fictitious newspaper articles.

And illustrate some.

Here is Max's passport to travel into the Middle Ages. 

Each week I also read from a tour guide about that particular time in history, it sets the stage for the activities. Sometimes there are audio tours as well as the readings. This last week we listened as a reporter interviewed different people about their role in the Medieval class structure.

Now and then we get postcards from historical people telling us about the event in history where they played a part. The boys then illustrate the front of the post card and place into their post card rack.

We also are creating lapbook mini books as we go along and at the end of the year we will assemble the whole lap book. It should make for a fun review of all the things we have studied. 

There will be recipes to make, things to make like a castle out of sugar cubes and a Robinhood hat. We will also learn about every aspect of Medieval life. More about all that as we go along. I also have found oodles of wonderful you tube videos that go along nicely with each weeks readings and activities which I will be showing the boys each project day. 

NOTE: Many of the titles below are not suitable for children. We got around this by downloading the video and editing it in a editing program. Then we can be sure they boys get the content that is worthwhile for them at this age.

Here is our list of Medieval history videos. You can find them all on you-tube:

BBC Rise and Fall of Rome Series

History Channel's "The Dark Ages"

Merchant of Venice

Terry Jones Medieval Lives: The Peasant

Terry Jones Medieval Lives: The Knight

Medieval Warfare: Castle at War

Who were the Vikings BBC part 1/3

Viking Trading Empire BBC part 2/3

End of the Viking Age BBC part 3/3

History Channel's : "The Real Vikings"

Terry Jones Medieval Lives: The Monk

Illuminations BBC parts 1-6

History Channel's "The Plague"

El Cid

Terry Jones Medieval Lives: The Kings

Terry Jones: The Crusades parts 1-4

Terry Jones medieval lives:  The Outlaw

Christina: a Medieval Life

Terry Jones Medieval Lives: The Damsel

Terry Jones Medieval Lives: The Philosopher

Terry Jones Medieval Lives: The Minstrel

Bye for now....Enjoy!

Week Five Wrap-Up

The weather is cooler this week now that fall is finally decided to show up. We still have some green leaves on the trees making for some lovely shade in our garden which I adore. Before it gets too cold I still plan more outdoor dinners and time to take naps on the trampoline...makes for a great hammock!

We are just about finished reading The Blessed Child by Ted Dekkar and Bill Bright. It will be sad to end yet another heartwarming story to move on to the next one. We all have enjoyed this glimpse into God's miraculous nature that The Blessed child has revealed.

We are also completing our memorization of skip count song X6 about the monkey's in the jungle and will be learning X7 next week. I have been implementing more living math methods in our approach towards multiplication. So now that we have arrived at the X6 tables I am slowing down on how much new stuff I am presenting them to be sure they are really understanding the why of the table.

“The child may learn the multiplication-table and do a subtraction sum without any insight into the rationale of either. He may even become a good arithmetician, applying rules aptly, without seeing the reason of them; but arithmetic becomes an elementary mathematical training only in so far as the reason why of every process is clear to the child. 2+2=4, is a self-evident fact, admitting of little demonstration; but 4x7=28 may be proved." (Vol. 1 pp. 255, 256) 

So next week I'll explain how we did this. In the handbook Mathematics: An Instrument for Living Teaching gives some guide lines:

“To help the children to see the rationale of the multiplication table, they at first construct each one for themselves with the teacher’s assistance, e.g., suppose it were 4 times, the teacher begins ‘I write down one 4 on the board with a small 1 above it, to show how many fours I have. Then I write down another four, how many have I?’ ‘Two.’ ‘How much have I now, two fours that is?’ ‘Eight.’ Put eight down underneath the second 4. Now write down another four, we have three fours or 12, similarly four fours or 16, five fours or 20, and so on to the end of the table, 12 fours or 48, until the whole table stands: 

(Stephens, 1911, p. 10). 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

equals
4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 44 48

They will see ( I trust) how the skip counting helps with the table and how multiplication is a simple way to do addition.

Much of my time this week has been spent preparing a lapbook centered around The Iliad by Homer. We have been reading Rosemary Sutcliff's version (Black ships Before Troy) of this epic poem which is actually written in a narrative form. On our next pass through this fascinating portion of history we will read the poem written by Homer.

To prepare the lapbook I print off the pages, cut them out and assemble parts that would be time consuming and irrelevant to the point of the book. Some things by doing them the boys will learn more about the story, other things are just busy work, I save them that. So once the mini books are ready I put them into a plastic pouch and save them for the boys. This time I fashioned the lap book to fit into our spiral bound scrapbook.

Just a glimpse of the mini books all out of the pocket.

The boys spent time coloring the pieces that made up the two front covers before we pasted them onto the cover and then into the spiral bound book. We limited the colors used to just browns and yellows to see how the colors will tie the whole lapbook together visually. This was an unpopular suggestion on my part and though the boys did it, they asked that they could decide on the colors next time. So though it looks great this way it is theirs and next time you will see the colors they choose.

Here is Zak's completed covers pasted in the notebook. We now have a lapbook in a note book. I am not sure if we are lapbooking or notebooking but probably the former rather than the latter. Either way it is working rather well. :)

We did put the mini books together and into place, but we have not yet written in them, colored them or done any sort of real study using them. In the end we will have understood better who killed who, who fought with the Trojans and who fought with the Greeks. We will know the family tree of the Greek gods and which gods played a part in this story. And last put the story on the map.

More entries made this week in the Aesop copywork book. Zak really caught onto this assignment and though I require only one fable a day he has been doing two or three hoping to get more and more treats for good handwriting. Very cute!

The boys are all sad that the Burgess Bird Book is drawing to a close. They are counting the pages that are left and savoring them. I suggested we read the book again, for there are so many things you can do to compliment this book and dig a little deeper into the information he so wonderfully presents about birds. I am strongly considering this but have not yet decided. What would you do? The boys were intrigued. I mean really, who said you can only read a book once? And then there are the issues brought up in my mind regarding illustrations and CM's methods. I like this quote from this article and am pondering just what part adding more to the reading of the story will play in their minds.

Our senses, it seems to me, are some of the tools we have for taking in information, but they are not the primary tools for learning.  This is a major problem in much of the world of education today.  There is much talk about learning styles, and I suppose it is helpful to know one’s learning style, but the fact is, taking information in is not the same as processing that information, or, as Mason said, “labouring with the mind.”   This is the step that many children never get to take in their learning process.  This is the purpose of narration, which Mason called “the act of knowing” (p. 17).  In fact, we may have preferences as to which sense we prefer to take in information (visually, kinesthetically, aurally, tactically, or odoriferously), but this is not the same as owning new information.  Mason says, “We trust much to pictures, lantern slides, cinematograph displays; but without labour there is no profit.” 

I'll tell you what I came up with next week. 

Another thing we completed this week: Memorized the Poem "A Secret." We did it the same we memorized the first poem, with drawing pictures, copywork and lots of reading and repetition. Now we are off to do some dictation the boy's favorite exercises. No really, it is!

We are getting to the end of Toad Triumphant too. This week seemed to be a week of many endings.  Thus I am soooo excited for next week which will be full of beginnings. :)

We veered away from the dialogues this week to look into the grammar of Latin. It was just a peek. I printed off cards with nouns (animals), cards with adjectives. The first day we simply played concentration with the animals to learn their names in latin.

On the second day we together matched the adjectives with the animals according to their gender. SImply collectively making up funny sentences with just the nouns and adjectives.

Then on the third day I hand printed two cards for each with the verbs we know thus far, erit (will be) and est (is). They first took the pile of adjectives and separated the masculine ones from the feminine ones, then I gave them each an animal and they created sentences matching the gender of the noun with the gender of the adjective. Then they read out their sentence in Latin and translated it to us using the words to help sheet below.

The cards for the animals and the adjectives were from the Minimus Teacher's guide, but the Words to Help sheet I made myself in Publisher.

To enhance the Klee inspired 3-D cities we painted last week we added some black lines, wow, they look so much better. These are Max's paintings.

Mostly this week we have been working on drawing and coloring 'inchies.' of Paul Klee's art works. Each square is 2 inches by 2 inches. We plan to make twelve in all and so far the boys have made 6 each, so we are halfway there.

Last week we finished reading A Day with Tchaikovsky so this week we listened to Tchiakovsky Comes to America a production by Classical Kids. Now onto a long look at the NutCracker Ballet. The boys will love this!

Lastly this week we went indoors to add an entry into our nature notebooks. Is wasn't because the weather was bad, but that it seemed a good time to add in a little skill training to our nature observation. We used basic contour drawings to develop the eye and train the coordination between what you see and what you draw. 

We did go out to get something to draw and then we drew the contour or outside edges of the specimen we selected. Then on another sheet of paper we tried a blind contour drawing looking only at the specimen and not at our papers. I did it first to show them how silly it will look and so they would not be afraid to just give it a go. This technique develops the best hand eye coordination needed for drawing. It was hilarious, fun and relaxed us all. Then they drew their specimen having had a good look at it now adding in as many details as we could see.

Hope your week was a good one too!

Week Four Wrap-Up

"The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's "own" or "real" life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life-the life God is sending one day by day: what one calls one's "real life" is a phantom of one's own imagination." - C.S. Lewis

We have begun a new read aloud this week entitled The Blessed Child by Ted Dekker and I am soooo pleased how well it is enhancing our study of Acts. I did not plan this but followed the Lord in little decisions and it led us here. Both books speak of God's ability to be above the natural laws of science. Caleb in our story of the blessed child says it is simply putting things right. His story enhances the truth of the bible and brings the power from back then into the present encouraging us in this era to believe in Jesus as they did at the beginning of the first century.

"The great difference between present-day Christianity, and that of which we read in these letters (of the new testament), is that to us it is primarily a performance' to them it was real experience. We are apt to reduce the Christian religion to a code or, at best, a rule of heart and life. Perhaps if we believed what they believed, we could achieve what they achieved."-J.B. Philips in the intro to his translation of the New testament.

Skipping right along to our arithmetic lesson on skip counting. Reading Mathematics: An Instrument for living teaching this last week has encouraged me to add one more element to our current mathematics lessons. In Section two entitled: The teaching of Mathematics this quote by CM inspired me towards change:

“Therefore his progress must be carefully graduated; but there is no subject in which the teacher has a more delightful consciousness of drawing out from day to day new power in the child. Do not offer him a crutch: it is in his own power he must go. Give him short sums, in words rather than in figures, and excite in him the enthusiasm which produces concentrated attention and rapid work. Let his arithmetic lesson be to the child a daily exercise in clear thinking and rapid, careful execution, and his mental growth will be as obvious as the sprouting of seedlings in the spring” (Vol. 1, p. 261).

  The highlighted part gave me cause to think...my lessons are short, but are they in words rather than figures, and are they rapid  producing concentrate effort? I decided they were not, so I added in twice a week a new lesson where by I read out story problems from Ray's PrimaryArithmetic book that I used last year for addition and subtraction. We play at the number questions like a spelling bee one day and on another day using the Storm the castle game board. We play with the dodecahedron dice we made last year to keep them game moving and the lesson is still short. The challenging part is that the answers in both games must be given in a full sentence.

So our week of mathematics now looks like this:

Day one: Review and sing all the skip counting songs we have learned.
Day two: Review last two skip counting songs and fill in a skip counting sheet for the latest one this week it was X5. Look for patterns in the table.
Day Three: Play math-bee using Ray's Arithmetic  multiplication problems.
Day Four: play skip counting song X5 and preview X6.
Day five: fill out the multiplication table up to number 5. (Next week up to number 6) Look for patterns in the table.
Day six: Read from Mathematicians are people too Vol. 2 and play storm the castle with Ray's multiplication problems.

The Story of the Greeks we have finished, so I am beginning to read aloud to them from The Black Ships Before Troy a narrative version of Homer's poem The Iliad. There is a wonderful audio of Alfred J. Church's The Iliad for Boys and Girls which I play for them at night as they are going to sleep. We alternate now between The audio of The Wind and the Willows, The Burgess Bird book and now this one. A good story should be listened to again and again I think. :)

Here are some pages from our Aesop's copywork books.

Their handwriting is improving with the challenge of not having any scratch outs of mistakes on the first attempt to gain a treat. I love it!!

More pictures below of our scrapbook activity The Ancient Greek Olympics. The pages in the slide show are from various sources, but predominately from History Pockets: Ancient Greece.

I found a new resource to go along with the Burgess Bird book...videos of each of the birds mentioned in the book. Check it our HERE. The posts are in a backwards order beginning with the last chapter, but you can easily sort it out. The boys are still absolutely loving this book. They work extra hard during our reading of The Black Ships before Troy to finish up their Aesop copywork so they can just sit and listen to the stories spun by Mr. Burgess.

In our lessons with the Primary Language lessons we have been doing a bit of dictation this week and some preliminary work on a new poem called "A Secret." Below is a snap shot of Max's drawing and copywork form the first two lines.

The boys are reading on in the Elson reader book three. At night before bed I read aloud to them from  Toad Triumph the sequel to WInd in the Willows.

 "I am so glad the stories are continuing on mom," says Max. " I just love that little mole."

Latin with Minimus has been so much fun this year. I realize now that we have begun with it how easy it is to fit it into the CM method.  Keep the lessons short, begin with oral and move to writing, copy what is right and visualize the vocabulary etc. We learn the dialogues much as we might a poem by hearing it often and reading it together. This week we have been getting the nuances of the dialogue understood and retained by playing vocab-bees. 

We end this week with a project we did painting Paul Klee cityscapes in 3-D. One side is day and warm colors, and the opposite side is night painted with cool colors. The first day we paper mache'd an old printer ink cartridge box. We have a bunch lying around the spare room. Then we drew our city and painted it with warm colors. The next day we drew our city again and painted with cool colors.

AND

An observation lesson using the willow tree in the back yard.

Have a good week!

Week Three Wrap-Up

Max

What a fast, busy, productive wild week we have had! If it were not for God in us we would be truly warped. He paced our days, gave us patience with each other and blessed us with Himself daily. What made a big difference in the week was that I spent more time in the mornings sitting with Him and singing....I love to sing especially about Him. My Favorite this week:

This week I was tempted often to add more and more things to our schedule, to go faster, to be busier. But why? I wondered. As I began to rush I often rushed the boys. I could be quick, sharp tongued and irritable. Luckily I saw the signs and slowed down. I took time to lay upon my bed and wait. I waited upon God for perspective, for help with the tasks lying undone around me and for a tangible and concrete way to remember the glorious truth that after all I am dead and He does live in me. I have a new life, a powerful one right here with me ready to orchestrate and create goodness and care in my little world. I ought to let Him. As I waited, it was easier to let go and to begin again watching instead of driving, listening instead of speaking. My sons responded with a tremendous love for me. Hugs from little boys are sooo sweet. I am addicted.

Zak with my good friend Michele's dog Kahalie

Last week we completed Bruchko and now we are reading a book from the Trailblazer series called Risking the Forbidden Game. It is about a young Muslim boy in Morocco who plays a very simple but later dangerous game of stealing items from the French soldiers or any other infidels during the Muslim celebration of Ramadan. Along the way he discovers he likes hearing stories about Jesus and those who tell about him. But he finds that his game leads to real life and death consequences for his new infidel friend. So far a great read.

We have been having so much fun draaaawwlllling to the X4 skip count song with a country western tune and Rapping with the X5 song. This little album has been such a painless way to learn these math facts. And slowly the boys are catching onto the multiplication table. So nothing new this week here just onward ho! 

But here is something new. I noticed that during the first four lessons of the day there is a lot of extra time that could be utilized. I read aloud to them for most of the morning, and I realized that they can be busy working on something that is somewhat "brainless" while I read. So, as I read a Fable from Aesop and stories from The Story of the Greeks, and  a delightful tale from The Burgess Bird Book they color and copy. This turned out to be a good way to introduce Aesop to the the boys and to my lovely copywork book. 

Knowing they just "love" doing copywork (LOL) I thought this book would work well for them because many, if not most, of the morals they copy are short. Since the copy work is short and the boys are needing a new challenge,  I upped the ante to earn a treat. This summer if they could copy the selection from their readers with no mistakes the first time: that means they don't miss any words, or forget a misspelling etc. they got a treat. If there were mistakes they had to recopy it. This year no cross outs! No Grace! First time, beautiful writing, no mistakes. They are getting it down. I am amazed at what they can do.

We are on Lesson #3 in Primary Language Lessons and should finish memorizing the poem "If I Knew" this week. We went about learning the Poem this way...

DAY ONE:  the boys read the entire poem aloud, each one taking one line at a time. Next I had them close their eyes and I read the entire poem aloud to them with emphasis and a bit of drama. Then they copied the first four lines into their composition notebooks (There are 16 lines in all) and drew a picture to go with it. Then I knew if they were understanding the meaning of the lines in the poem. 

DAY TWO:  The boys read the poem aloud again each taking a turn to read one line. I read it to them, and they copied the next four lines of the poem into their composition notebook like they did on the first day and drew a picture. Same lesson with different lines and pictures to draw. 

DAY THREE: On this day the boys read the poem again line by line taking turns, and I read it to them as they sat quietly with closed eyes. Then we said the first four lines from memory each one. Then we said the first eight lines from memory. Then the boys went on to try twelve lines from memory. Then they attempted all sixteen lines. Amazing.

DAY FOUR: The boys read the poem aloud again each taking a turn to read one line. I read it to them, and they copied the next four lines of the poem into their composition notebook like they did on the first and second days and drew a picture of someone gathering frowns form the nursery, the schools and the streets and putting them into a box.

DAY FIVE: The boys read the poem aloud again each taking a turn to read one line. I read it to them, and they copied the last four lines of the poem into their composition notebook like they did on the first and second days and drew a picture. This time they got to draw a giant dropping a box of frowns into the depths of the deep deep sea. So much fun imagery.

DAY SIX: Repeat of day three. On this day the boys read the poem again for the last time line by line taking turns, and I read it to them as they sat quietly with closed eyes. Then we said the first four lines from memory each one. Then we said the first eight lines from memory. Then the boys went on to try twelve lines from memory. Then they attempted all sixteen lines. 

And they did it. They memorized their  FIRST poem. I am so proud of them!

TJ

We have begun a new dialogue in our Latin lessons called "Lepidina at the Party" We are using the Minimus Latin curriculum this year.  In our lesson we learned a lot of new vocabulary words for a birthday party. We sang happy birthday in Latin and made a birthday card for Minims the mouse.

At the end of the day we have been making Klee inspired fish paintings with black oil pastels and gauche. 

and...Klee inspired clay fish.

We used a homemade polymer clay with cornstarch, baby oil, lemon juice and white glue. The consistency of the dough was fantastic! Then we let the dough dry for a day or so and painted them.

For other art recipes I found a wonderful interest site with oodles of fun things to try. You might also find some good ideas for other Paul Klee art projects at these sites:

Art projects for kids: Mini mural
Arted-Paul Klee
Deep Space Sparkle: Modern Masters
Meet the Masters
Harmony Art Mom

Zak

And to top off our week we had a fun game/activity/scrapbook day. It all began with this video clip about the Olympics.

Max is working on a picture of Zeus the god the Ancient Greeks honored during the Olympic games. The unveiling of the scrap book pages is still to come...

We played a rousing game of Digging up Greece. This is a FREE game found online. It is another of Ellen's (creator of Prof. Pig's Magic Math) wonderful inventions. She says this about the game...

"The board is a large map of Greece (6 pages taped together!).  The die does not contain numbers, but rather modes of transportation.  The players pretend to be college students taking a semester abroad in Greece and they use boats, cars, or planes to hop around the country, visiting famous sites and collecting artifacts.   When POP QUIZ is rolled on the dice, they must answer a multiple choice question about ancient Greek history. "

We say it is a blast to play it. What a great way to learn the islands and cities why the whole map of
Greece! And a bit of Greek history to boot.

Lastly we spent time outside making an entry into our nature notebooks. This week noting something overhead.