British History: Geography and Mapwork

This is being posted a little out of order but eventually I should have a good series of posts on British History from Pre-history to Modern times. This was how we started our studies on the history of the British Isles:


Geography:

I always like starting our studies with mapwork so the kids can visualise where the events take place. I chose to have them look at a number of different maps (physical and political), identify the different countries that make up the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) and locate the major cities in each of these countries. They then proceeded to make a salt dough map which I love doing because they have fun with it and I think it really solidifies their learning.

They identified the following cities and islands:

London

Birmingham

Manchester

Newcastle

Edinburgh

Glasgow

Belfast

Cardiff

Orkney islands

Outer and Inner Hebrides

Isle of Mann

Guernsey 

Jersey

And then they identified the following rivers, mountains and seas:

River Thames

Grampian Mountains

Cambrian Mountains

Peninnes

Southern Uplands

Northwest Highlands

Celtic sea

Irish sea

Atlantic Ocean

English Channel

Straits of Dover

North Sea

Freeworldmaps provides some very helpful maps to work from. 

Poetry kids love: T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

I was looking for some fun poems to enjoy with the girls when I was suddenly thrown back to my childhood and the memory of my time in the car, with my mum, singing songs from “Cats: The Musical”  by Andrew Lloyd Webber. We had watched the musical together in the West End on a trip to London and we both loved the music. I learnt all the lyrics to the songs and was surprised to  find out later that the lyrics were actually adapted from poems by T.S. Eliot. These poems had been written to amuse his grandchildren and they certainly entertained. I remember devouring the poems as a child and I suspected my girls would get the same amount of enjoyment from them too. The poems are hard to resist and they beg to be read out loud and acted out and that is exactly what happened as the girls read them.

We started off by reading a selection of poems like Macavity: The Mystery Cat and The Naming Of the Cats, which I had printed off the internet and then, just for fun, I showed them clips from musical. It whetted their appetite and they were eager to read the other poems as well as watch more clips from the musical. Before long, I caught them practising their own rendition of The Old Gumbie Cat - not only had they had memorised it but they had also choreographed a whole song and dance routine and were practising it with such glee. :)

Needless to say - it was great fun and I always love it when they get this enthusiastic about something they are learning!

I purchased a lovely audio version of the poems beautifully read by Sir John Gielgud and Irene Worth.

These are some of the videos we watched from Cats: The musical. It definitely served a purpose in increasing their interest in the poems.

My daughter was so into it, she even made a glog about it. Making the glog really appealed to her artistic sensibilities and it was also a valuable exercise in learning to research and distil the information needed to fit the limited format. She really enjoyed the process and did a great job. 

Nature Studies: Is this cheating?

When I first started thinking about homeschooling, I was drawn to many aspects of the Charlotte Mason philosophy and approach and I knew that I definitely wanted to incorporate into our lives regular opportunities for art and poetry appreciation and also plenty of nature studies. 

However, when it came to nature studies and getting out and about - we just didn't. The reality being that the humidity and heat of living a few degrees north of the equator, is simply is too oppressive for us and it drives us indoors. On our last visit to the local tropical nature reserve, we ended up with huge welts of mosquito bites (despite copious amounts of insect repellent being applied) and drenched in sticky sweat. Not only that, after scaling the heights to the top of the hill, my toddler decided he had had enough and I had to carry him all the way down. It will probably be a while before we brave that again!

How I long for lovely balmy summer days, crisp cool autumns, delicious wintry weather and glorious spring days - but alas, in the tropics, that is only a dream. So, those long leisurely walks in the pleasant sun-dappled parks and forests will have to wait. The rainforest is a fascinating place to explore but how does a heat and perspiration averse family find a way to spend time enjoying more of God's beautiful creation? 

Well, first I decided that I would start small and try to incorporate nature studies in small and creative ways. Plan A was to get the girls to explore the fauna and flora in our local vicinity. I told to them to find and photograph any beasties they could within our small plot of garden and the landscaped gardens of the condominium we live in.  I equipped the girls with a camera and tasked them with the challenge of finding creatures big and small and photographing them if they could.They had fun and it was pretty successful in getting the kids out.These are some of the critters they caught on film.

Unfortunately, we found it difficult to identify the particular species of insect or animal and we got frustrated and lost heart a little. Also, as the weather got hotter and more oppressive, it became harder to persuade my girls to head out (they really don't like the heat). So, it seemed like our nature studies were doomed to be neglected.

I then hit upon an idea - nature studies don't always have to  be outside, do they? It is, after all, the study of nature and I can bring it into the home. So I planned a study on fruit, something easy and doable, an achievable goal we could build on. I would assign half an hour each week to the study of a particular fruit. 


The first week the girls looked at, sketched, and cut open a Papaya. We then went online to look at Papaya trees and I prepared a little note page on papayas which they read and stuck into their nature journals. They enjoyed it, stayed cool and happy - so I'll count it as a success.

The next week was followed by a study of a starfruit. 

It seems to be working well and I plan to carry on for awhile and spend time observing other tropical, local fruit like the Rambutan and Mangosteen.

It is not quite the getting out into the fresh air and observing nature in its natural surroundings (hence the cheating?) but I think it still counts as an opportunity for my children to observe and appreciate the natural world. What I have noticed is that the children are paying attention to their surroundings more, and they'll stop to watch a bird in the tree pecking away at the bark or a grasshopper perched on our window sill, which is lovely.

And who knows, we might still get out that door and brave the heat for another foray into nature in the not too distant future..  

Hands-On Activities: Byzantine Empire

My kids love getting messy with craft, clay, paint and generally being creative. So this term I have been determined to make sure that we complement our Tapestry of Grace studies with more hands on activities.

Our study of the Byzantine Empire inspired our art studies and there are so many different art activities one can do. Once we had spent enough time looking at the different aspects of Byzantine art from its architecture to mosaics and brilliant illuminations, I had to decide what we would take on.

Mosaics

  

Print a blackline picture drawn in Byzantine style on card stock, enlarge it and stick your tiles to it. 

Click here for a good source of Byzantine style colouring pages. This idea could easily be adapted to use paper tiles, coloured egg shells or glass tiles.

Other ideas for Mosaics:

Artists Helping Children is a good site with lots of different mosaic ideas.

KinderArt has a cute lesson on bean mosaics.

Frescos

Ms Julie's Art School has a great post on making a fresco using a blackline drawing. In this post, she is using a drawing from a fresco by Giotto Di Bondone but it is easy enough to substitute with one of the Byzantine colouring pages provided in the link above. 

Illuminations

This is the project that we picked in the end and I was very pleased with it. This site is fabulous for teaching your kids about manuscripts and illuminations. They have a slide show which shows a number of different illuminations and asks questions which allow the kids to explore each manuscript more closely and then it gives you more information about the manuscript you are observing. There is another resource that shows you how manuscripts were made, the different roles and the whole process. They also provide templates for you to make your own manuscript illuminations.

Creating a whole manuscript page would have taken more time than we had, so I decided that they should create their own illuminated letter which was a smaller more manageable project.

I found this fantastic PDF lesson on the Art Of Creating Illuminated Letters which I used as the basis of my instruction.  Then I used a free download from Prose and Letters which distilled in one page the essence of how to draw a medieval border. We then surfed online to look at different types of letter fonts and calligraphy to help them decide how they wanted to draw their letter. We used felt tip pens, coloured pencils and various metallic pens to get the right effect.

I was pleased with the end result.

Other Illumination resources:

This Crayon Resist Illumination lesson would be suitable to use with older children.

This Lesson from the Utah Museum of Fine Arts is full of useful information.  

Egyptian Day

These last two years, we have been working through our Tapestry of Grace (TOG) Year 1 curriculum for our Humanities studies. The focus has been on the Ancient world and we have just loved it! I never covered this in school so I was learning right alongside my girls. I plan to post about each of our individual study units in time.

One of the things that is recommended by TOG is the End of Unit Celebration. It is an opportunity to show off all the projects and work the children have accomplished over the months they have worked on a Unit. My approach to this has been to have a special day set aside where we have an "Ancient day". So, in the past two years we have had an Ancient Egyptian day, Ancient Civilisations day (which included the Ancient Americas, Ancient China and the Indus Valley), Ancient Greek and Ancient Roman days. We also celebrated our study of the Israelites with as Seder/Passover meal.

I love these and so do my children. They won't let me get away with not having a special celebration at the end of a unit now. It is a great way to review and enjoy all that they have learnt in a relaxed and fun way. It doesn't take a lot of effort but it does remain in the memory for a long time!

As it was our first celebration since we started homeschooling, I definitely went all out, making costumes and planning a really full on day. The costumes were kept simple and I've been able to reuse it for both our Greek and Roman days. I got a cheap white cotton sheet and folded it into the right length, cut a hole at the fold for the head and sewed up the sides. I also found a filmy pleated material which they wrapped around their waists. I also had some shiny gold cloth which I sewed onto one costume - you'll see my sewing skills are pretty limited hence the poor workmanship! They then adorned themselves appropriately with headbands and jewellery.

You can download the Egyptian jewellery template from Danielle's Place. I thought it worked really well! They enjoyed having the opportunity for the liberal use of black eyeliner as well. Of course, mummy and baby had to be dressed as well - since Egyptian children were usually naked, we let Adventure-man wander around in his nappy covered by a white towel. : )

We started the day with a quiz which acted as a review of the things they had learnt over the Unit. They had to start at the end of the room and for every correct answer, they got to advance one square floor tile and when they were at the other end of the room, we got into an imaginary Time Machine and travelled back to Ancient Egypt. They were able to call out famous sights and structures as we flew by them (imaginary of course!).

On our arrival, we tackled some Eyptian Math. These are a few sites that explain how they counted and calculated and it also provides some worksheets.

http://www.eyelid.co.uk/numbers.htm

http://webinstituteforteachers.org/99/teams/egyptmath/mathproblems.htm

http://letsplaymath.net/2007/08/11/egyptian-math-puzzles/

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/736149/mathematics_lesson_plan_egyptian_math.html?cat=25

We then finished off a colouring book project about the 10 Plagues found here.

During our Egyptian studies they made an Egyptian hunting snake-heard throwing stick by painting a wooden spoon. We used the Hands and Hearts Discovery Kit for many of the crafts we did for this unit - it includes the kit and instructions on how to make a paddle doll, Senet (an Egyptian boardgame), how to mummify an orange, how to make your own paint like the Egyptians and it also contains a CD with lovely notebooking pages. 

We learnt that children would practice their hunting throwing skills with a stick like this so I set up a line of soft toys on the top of our chair and the girls practiced their throwing skills. We then played a game of Senet on their homemade boards.You can find out more about Senet here and play online too.

After Senet, we had a go at some of these online games about Ancient Egypt:

Egyptian Tomb Adventure

Death in Sakkara 

The Jeweller of Memphis

During lunch we stopped to watch one of our documentaries on Ancient Egypt from the Discovery Channel. After it was over, we had a look at some Egyptian recipes and decided what we would like to cook for dinner. I took the girls shopping and they helped put the meal together.

We used the following recipes:

Ancient Egyptian Marinade

Ingredients
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons ground cumin
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 onion, grated
3 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

We marinated Chicken thighs for about 40 minutes and then grilled them in the oven, they were delicious!

Korrat (Leeks)

Ingredients
2 lbs. leeks
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 Tbsp sugar
4 Tbsp vegetable oil or extra-virgin olive oil
lemon juice
salt
Slice the leeks into 2 inch pieces. Fry the garlic and sugar in hot oil until the sugar becomes slightly carmelized. Lower the heat and add the leeks, until they are slightly coloured. Sprinkle with lemon juice and salt. Barely cover the leeks with water and cook until tender and the liquid is reduced. 

Egyptian Potatoes

20 medium red potatoes, peeled and sliced 4 cups thinly sliced onions 3/4 cup (1-1/2 sticks) butter, cut into small cubes Salt to taste Pepper to taste 6 cups tomato sauce Preheat the oven to 200C. Prepare the potatoes and set them aside in a bowl of lightly salted water. Lightly grease a large casserole dish with butter or vegetable oil. Spread out potatoes in a layer, then make a thin layer of onions, dot with cubes of butter, and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Make another layer of potatoes, onions, and butter cubes, season the layer, and continue until you have used up your ingredients, finishing with a layer of potatoes. Pour the tomato sauce over all, cover the casserole with aluminium foil and bake for an hour. Remove the foil and bake for another half hour. Allow to rest for 10 minutes before serving.

We finished off our meal with fresh figs and a date cake that we purchased. I found the first two recipes at Counter-cultural School and the potato recipe here.

Everyone dressed up for the feast including dad and we had a great time! It was a lovely memory to make a big effort and it is one the kids remember well.

There are many other activities one might do on a day like this - you could make a sugar lump pyramid, write your name in Hieroglyphics and make a cartouche, draw like and Egyptian, or mummify an orange. As we took about three weeks to complete our studies, we spread our hands-on activities out over those three weeks.

Enjoy!