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!

Imagination

"But let them have tales of the imagination, scenes laid in other lands and other times, heroic adventures, hairbreadth escapes, delicious fairy tales in which they are never roughly pulled up by the impossible--even where all is impossible, and they know it, and yet believe.” –Charlotte Mason

What is imagination? Why is imagination so important in education? How do you develop it in young scholars? These are questions I have been pondering. The research I have been doing to find the answers has been delightful, insightful and inspiring. I realized maybe for the first time that Charlotte Mason’s methods all have an over arching goal to them….to develop the child’s imagination.

What is Imagination?

Imagination: The ability of the mind to form pictures of things that are not present or real.

It is the world inside of our minds. It is a place that we can see, hear, and smell things remembered, things invented. It is a place to put one idea together with another. It is where we create and invent. It is also a place to retreat to when the world around is unpleasant or cruel. Sara in the story the little princess survived the terrible shock of her father’s supposed death but imagining. Here is a portion of chapter eight In the Attic, when Ermengarde and Sara have just become friends after Sara troubles began. They are talking about Sara’s troubles of losing her father, her position in the school and becoming a maid now living in the attic.

“I don’t see any good in them,(the troubles)” said Ermengarde stoutly.

“Neither do I-to speak the truth,” admitted Sara frankly. “But, I suppose there might be good in things, even if we don’t see it. There might-doubtfully be good in Miss Minchin.”

Ermengarde looked around the attic with a rather fearsome curiosity.

“Sara,” she said. “do you think you can bear living here?”

Sara looked around also.

“If I pretend it’s different, I can,” she answered. “Or if I pretend it is a place in a story.”

She spoke slowly, her imagination was beginning to work for her, it had nor worked for her at all since her troubles had come upon her. She had felt as if it had been stunned.”

What if little Sara could not have begun to imagine again? How dreary life might have become for her.
Why is imagination so important in education?

This is a much harder question for me to answer. Then I thought…what if we were made without the ability to imagine? No pictures would form in our minds when words were read from a page. Thus no books would have been written. We would know no stories. We would not be able connect ideas from one subject to another. We would not be able to understand math notations. How would we do math? History would be completely lost to us. And then further on outside of education, what if we could not imagine like little Sara did? We would not have a place to go to when troubles over come us. There would be no inventions. How would we know God since he is not visible? Or have faith in things unseen? We must conclude that we were designed to imagine. We were designed to believe in things we can not see. We were designed to put ideas together in our minds. It is part of being human. And if a child is a person as CM says then it is important that we cultivate this aspect of thier being. So.....

How do we develop imagination in our young scholars?

Just below is a rough, off the cuff list from my various readings trying to nail down practical ways I can be cultivating a healthy imagination in my three boys. I wanted to be aware also of the big and small ways I may be stunting their imagination, so there are two lists.

What cultivates imagination                            What stunts imagination

Living books                                                       too many toys
Solitude/free time                                                 television and DVD’s
Open ended questions                                         a busy schedule
Asking questions                                                  busy work, ruts
Nature                                                                  video games
Handicrafts                                                          dreaming about ones self
Games                                                                 sermonizing a reading
Narration                                                             the teacher talking too much
Wondering aloud                                                  telling things that can be discovered
Encouraging thoughtful observation                       hurried lessons
Activities where the brain works                            passive work
Executing his own ideas                                         following your ideas
Independence                                                        dependence
Relying on his own minds                                       giving answers instead of asking questions
Raw materials + time                                              indifferent teachers
Looking outward                                                   looking inward
Painting pictures for the mind                                 no inertia
Discovering of new ideas                                       going over the same ground again
Providing a banquet of ideas rich and varied           spoon fed doses of facts
Finding relationships between ideas                        unit studies
Encouragement                                                      criticism
Having direct experience with something                 not requiring memorization
Giving him meaty ideas                                           avoiding structure in learning
Mastering the grammar of everything

From these two lists, you may see what occurred to me, that CM’s methods, if used as she prescribes them, will no doubt lead to a well cultivated imagination. I also noticed something else, and that is that imagination is NOT exclusive of discipline or structure. Note the above points in the list: mastering the grammar of everything, not requiring memorization, avoiding structure in learning. In Anthony Esolen’s fascinating book Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child

He writes,

“If that seems merely absurd, you have never beheld the serpentine belt on a recently manufactured car—a belt that turns the fan, the alternator, the power steering, the water pump, and so forth. Goldberg's machines were wildly imaginative, really a gleeful celebration of the spirit of invention. In more recent times, Nick Park of Wallace and Gromit fame has revived that spirit, with Wallace sliding off his tilting bed into his trousers and through a trap door in the bedroom, down to the kitchen table below, where robot arms slap a shirt over his head and half a sweater on each arm. The Coyote in the old Road Runner cartoons was a failed Wallace, always purchasing some absurd heap of junk from the ever-present Acme Company—magnetized iron bird seed pellets, jet propelled roller skates—only to find the physics of the machine turn against him, causing
projecting ledge of a cliff to fall on his head, or something similarly disconcerting. None of this playfulness is possible without a deep sense of structure—without a skeleton upon which to hang one's welter of experience.”

“Structure: “grammar” that orders every part in its appropriate place—is important not only for the physical sciences, but for every kind of intellectual endeavor. It allows us to do more than weave a fancy from the bits and pieces of our private experience. We can, by the power of structure, weave a whole artistic universe.”  -Anthony Esolen Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child

So it seems imagination is not a freeing or unfettering of ALL restraints to flit about at your own fancy. It is helped along as well by structures. Some structures that Mr. Esolen mentioned in were: memorization, learning the grammar of things, detail work, mastering something, hard work. Also structures like those Charlotte Mason advocated; Life is a discipline, habits, perfect execution, attention, obedience etc. also then lends to the cultivating of a strong and vibrant imagination.

In our homeschool we have some good things in place, but this study tells me there is much more to be learned. I haven't yet completed Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, but I certainly will. It is fascinating to learn more about this wonderful tool for education.

A Desk and a Room

One of the best things we did this year was to purchase desks for the boys and put them in a room we call the "School Room". It was a hard choice for me because I was very adament about making learning a lifestyle and desks just screamed institution!. Then to have a school room just brings school home which is just to opposite of what we are trying to do with our education. I should not have been so concerned....the boys love the desks. As soon as Zak saw one in the store he sat down at it and said in such a determined tone "This is mine!" At that moment, it struck me that perhaps my view on education wasn't the only view to consider in our education system. Perhaps Zak had something to show me. Perhaps I needed to let go of my ideals and let the boys create the educational environmet that appealed most to them, even if it did look alot like a school.

The boys were all very energetic about having a space to themselves to manage, to store stuff in and to call their own. It revealed such interesting characteristics about each one that I found it delightful and fascinating to observe how they went about it. My very sequential one was a pack rat and very messy. My random one was a minimalist putting on his desk only the most useful and needed items. My oldest was just what you woud expect, tidy and reasonable.

I find desk help us daily to learn orderliness and organization. At the close of each day of lessons they are not free to play until the desk is in order. To help with this, I purchased these colored plastic folders one for each subject and they keep much of their finished work or ongoing work in these in a self just below their desk. They were given waste baskets to keep track of their garbage, and I provided several tin cans to store pens and scissors etc in. Now they have a place to put their school  tools and work outside of lesson time. They are now more in contact with their lesson materials. Often they will return during the day to color unfinished pictures, or play with some of the games we have played during lesson times. I love how this puts learning more into their hands.

I have a cabinet with my stuff in there too. I love having all my materials right there close at hand while I am teaching. I love sitting at the work table in the middle of the room, planning lessons with fun red and white striped curtains smiling down on me, and everything right at my finger tips. When lessons are over the rest of my house is still intact, clean, orderly. It has not been disturbed by art lessons or projects that left cuttings all over the floor. The dinning room table is not another job to do before I can get to preparing lunch. I can leave a school project behind closed doors and get lunch on the table in no time at all and then we can pick up on that project later when we have time for it.

I have learned that it isn't  the furniture or a room that dictates what kind of education you will be doing, but the ideas and desires that lie within you and your children which sets you on your course. Structures, furniture and other exteranl things are servants that enable us to reach our goals. A desk and a room are not a definition but a way to stay organized and thus go more swiftly onward towards a life full of new ideas laced with rich stories and wonderful projects that who knows...... may change the world!