Medieval Project Part 2

So I thought I would do a separate post to describe our feast in more detail.

A genuine medieval feast had many many courses and nobles and the royalty would literally eat all day.  We pared it down a bit!!

The feast was heralded by the cornet.  Then the feast commenced with the following menu

Menu
Poussin
Duck
Pickled herring
Vegetable Potage
Bread and butter

Marpisan subtleties shaped by the boys

Apple Pie
 

 
 

 The feast was followed with entertainment from the court jesters.  There was
clowning followed by wrestling!

I'm sure we didn't eat enough for a genuine medival feast as there was still some room for tea later!

Medieval Project Part 1

Welcome to our colourful, extraordinary, fantastical, medieval project extravagansa. In the next few paragraphs, you will be entertained, amused, amazed and leave my blog, bloated with new ideas as you feast on its splendour! Hopefully it won't have the same after effects as a genuine medieval feast!

Now for the practical stuff! ... Our activities included lots of reading, visits, craft and finished off with a medieval feast.  We didn't "produce" much written work as I wanted to keep it fun and light.

I highly recommend this fantastic book on medieval feasts. A nobleman is told that the King is about to visit and the story follows his, and his servants' amazing preparations -  and boy was it expensive! The pictures are filled with all kinds of interesting things to spot and lots of amazing facts about the medieval period. For several weeks the boys requested this every day! We ended up basing our end of project medieval feast on this book as well as lots of suggestions from my Facebook friends (thank you!)



We also enjoyed these two David Macaulay books which follow the story and construction of a castle and a cathedral. They would probably be better for age 8+





This Usborne book is very good




This version of Robin Hood is also a favourite



The boys had great fun constructing a medieval castle from a cardboard box and also from a pre-bought book like this one



Other activities included:

Making medieval shields
Drawing castles and surrounding peasant huts
Making collage of the armour as God and memorising Ephesians Ch 6 v 10-11
Visiting Denny Abbey for their medieval day (see below)
Having a medieval feast (See part 2)

Season of a Mother's Heart - Review

One of my favourite books recently, and a really encouraging read, is "Seasons of a Mother's Heart" by Sally Clarkson, co-author of "Educating the Wholehearted Child".  She has written several books for mothers but the focus for this one is particularly for homeschooling mothers of young children.  Sally Clarkson is a Christian author and this is a very Christian book.




She divides the book into four sections, spring, summer, autumn and winter and reflects on the different challenges, joys and opportunities which face home-schooling mothers.  The chapters cover themes such as celebrating our calling and our life even when it's tough; living in a joyful way; freedom from guilt; discipling our children; enduring with grace.

The book has a Charlotte Mason flavour and is very gentle and reflective.  It is a very encouraging and uplifting read, but I think it's much more than that.  There is lots of practical advice, including how to build better and closer relationships with our children; how to foster family times and great collective memories and how to recharge our batteries amongst the daily business.

She also includes lots of great personal  anicdotes which are warm and realistic.  I like one where a small child gate-crashes her "me time" and she has to quickly adapt without showing disappointment.  It turns out to be a really blessed time with the child.

In summary, it's actually one of the books I've enjoyed the most on mothering and home-education. I would highly recommend it.

Classroom secrets

Here is a very interesting BBC documentary which follows 4 children through a school week and highlights the problem of "low level disruption" in the classroom.  They conclude that one of the main ways to improve kids' achievement is to increase parental involvement.

Warning ... may make you want to consider home-educating!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b012ltz9/Classroom_Secrets/

Two-year-olds 'to be given compulsory education checks

"All two-year-olds will be given a compulsory “progress check” under Government plans to identify children failing to develop properly at a young age."

See article here

Handwriting and Maths - Having a Re-think

Quite a few things have changed for us since we started home-educating two years ago.  Two years ago!!  Now I have a 6 year old I can see the truth of comments I heard back then about pushing kids too early.  I am happy to admit that I have probably been guilty of that in some areas.  But in some ways I am glad we have already tried out different curriculums and ideas as I am beginning to see what is working for us as a family.

T is struggling a bit with his handwriting.  He can write a short sentence but it's not a fun process!  He also struggles quite a bit with letter reverse and basic letter formation.

So for handwriting, we're trying handwriting without tears (HWOT) Kindergarten level.  HWOT is a multi-sensory approach using great big wooden letters and a chalk board to practise letter formation.  The idea is to re-inforce the letter formation so much that hopefully T won't struggle so much with the mechanics.  I found with reading that going back to the basics was a great approach when we hit a brick wall, so I'm hopeful that this will make a real difference for him.

With maths, T is doing OK.  We're using math mammoth which I really like, but I've realised that T needs something more hands on.  Some days he can do his maths problems and the next day he can't, so something clearly isn't working for him.  I've just ordered MathUSee which I've heard good things about.  Again this is a multi-sensory programme which is really heavy on manipulatives.  DH never enjoyed maths when he was younger and he has watched the sample videos and given them the thumbs up.  So watch this space!

For other subjects we're doing fun projects in the afternoon - one on the human body which I'll write about shortly.  I think we're going to do lots more unit studies together as I can teach S and T together and they really enjoy them and retain a lot.  S especially loves the project on his body because we have created a full sized picture of him and his insides.  They want to do a project on snakes next!

Encouraging a Reluctant Artist Part 2

Isn't it strange to look back on children and remember problem you had a few years ago!  My sister in law reminded me recently about a post I did a long while back on encouraging a reluctant artist.  It seems strange because now my title should really be "discouraging a prolific artist who is always messing up our dining room"!  No .. I'm actually joking of course, because I love art being created, especially now I've persuaded our 6 year old not to do it at 6 in the morning!

So how did we crack it?  Well actually it was due to encouraging a thousand little opportunities to "do art" and having materials always available even at the expense of a tidy house.  Also, due to a lovely lady at our local HE art group has really encouraged and sparked T's enthuiasm.  We have tried so many different techniques over the past couple of years and it has really sparked T's interest!

Robin in our garden

Poppy picked from our front garden

Blackbird in our garden

I have also looked for opportunities to include art in various projects we have done.  Here are a few recent pictures from our "nature journal" which we sporadically add to.

The Little Red Lighthouse 2011

Roughly every other week, we have a book for the week.  Yes, that's right - we read the same book every day for a week.  We actually find it is not boring because good books will bear re-reading and it is often a very rich experience.  The boys love the books and the "Five in a Row" books are often their favourites to pick for reading even when we aren't studying them officially.

The book we used last week is "The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Grey Bridge," by Hildegard Swift.  It's the story of a lighthouse that protects the river Hudson in New York.  It thinks it is redundant one day when a great bridge begins to be erected and it realises that the bridge also has a flashing light.  However, it learns that each one has its own very important job.  It's a story my boys really like with the night scenes and mild sense of danger.



Now when we study a book, I do use the "Five in a Row" manual.  I find it a really good sources of ideas.  However, we concentrate on talking through themes as we read and reading other books alongside it.  When I started using the programme we did try to produce little folders or lapbooks but I found it was becoming much too onerous and actually putting me off doing a book.  Now I simply read through the book each day with a different theme in mind and I point out various things in the book as we go.

And this is how my week with the book panned out:

Monday: Read the story.
Tuesday: Read the story and also looked at the globe and atlas on America.
Wednesday: Read the story and also read a book rivers and the water cycle.
Thursday: Explained nouns and verbs and read through the story trying to spot them.
Friday: Read the story and looked at the way the artist depicts the night.  In the afternoon did some artwork of our own of night scenes. We used watercolour pastels because they're a mixture between pastels and watercolour paints. They're easy to use but children can blend them afterwards like watercolour paints.

Here are some of the other resources we used.