History and Geography
We start our journey with Marco Polo at the beginning -- his hometown, 13th Century Venice. The lesson plan on the website involves a fair bit of interactive, online resources that Tiger enjoyed working on, especially the map-maker, tracing Marco Polo's route, and making the brochure. After that, Tiger jumped on Google Map to have a virtual tour of Venice.
We also watched the first six-and-a-half minutes of the following clip to get a better understanding of Venice during Marco Polo's time:
Music
Most days, we have the following music playing in the background from lunch time onwards.
Art and Craft
The Wallace Collection has two rooms dedicated to Venetian art where we had a good look at the paintings depicting Venetian life and street scenes of the 15th-18th centuries.
Venice was a busy trading centre when Marco Polo was growing up so he would have seen many of the activities by the port where he lived. We also learned that jewellery beads that were made in Venice at that time was a popular trade item.
I have a friend who is an expert polymer clay jewellery maker so Tiger and I spent an afternoon learning the trade from her. Tiger made a ring, several pendants, a few beads, and a pencil cover.
Food and Cooking
I suspect the 13th Century Venetians ate very different food from what we know as popular Italian food, but I am happy to serve up what I know to support our 'travel' in Venice: pasta dishes and pizza.
Tiger also made his own pizza, from reading the instructions on a recipe book, measuring the amount of ingredients he needed, to mixing, kneeding, and putting the toppings on:
Books
Just to have a broader sense of the country beyond Venice, Tiger read the following books:
This post is linked up to:
1) Look What We Did!
2) Culture Swapper - April
3) Virtual Refrigerator
4) History and Geography Meme #68
5) Homeschool Mother's Journal: April 5, 2013
6) Hobbies and Handicrafts - April 5
7) Collage Friday - Surprises on Spring Break
8) Homeschool Review
9) Weekly Wrap-Up: The Really Busy One Before Spring Break
10) Kids in the Kitchen - Clam Chowder
11) Hip Homeschool Hop - 4/9/13
We start our journey with Marco Polo at the beginning -- his hometown, 13th Century Venice. The lesson plan on the website involves a fair bit of interactive, online resources that Tiger enjoyed working on, especially the map-maker, tracing Marco Polo's route, and making the brochure. After that, Tiger jumped on Google Map to have a virtual tour of Venice.
We also watched the first six-and-a-half minutes of the following clip to get a better understanding of Venice during Marco Polo's time:
Music
Most days, we have the following music playing in the background from lunch time onwards.
Art and Craft
The Wallace Collection has two rooms dedicated to Venetian art where we had a good look at the paintings depicting Venetian life and street scenes of the 15th-18th centuries.
Venice was a busy trading centre when Marco Polo was growing up so he would have seen many of the activities by the port where he lived. We also learned that jewellery beads that were made in Venice at that time was a popular trade item.
I have a friend who is an expert polymer clay jewellery maker so Tiger and I spent an afternoon learning the trade from her. Tiger made a ring, several pendants, a few beads, and a pencil cover.
Food and Cooking
I suspect the 13th Century Venetians ate very different food from what we know as popular Italian food, but I am happy to serve up what I know to support our 'travel' in Venice: pasta dishes and pizza.
Tiger also made his own pizza, from reading the instructions on a recipe book, measuring the amount of ingredients he needed, to mixing, kneeding, and putting the toppings on:
Books
Just to have a broader sense of the country beyond Venice, Tiger read the following books:
This post is linked up to:
1) Look What We Did!
2) Culture Swapper - April
3) Virtual Refrigerator
4) History and Geography Meme #68
5) Homeschool Mother's Journal: April 5, 2013
6) Hobbies and Handicrafts - April 5
7) Collage Friday - Surprises on Spring Break
8) Homeschool Review
9) Weekly Wrap-Up: The Really Busy One Before Spring Break
10) Kids in the Kitchen - Clam Chowder
11) Hip Homeschool Hop - 4/9/13
I love the variety of learning activities you did -crafts, cooking, field trips and multi-media resources. Thank you for sharing it!
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome, Phyllis, and thank you for always leaving kind comments. :-) I think we are in a unit study / theme phase at the moment so we are doing many activities that are related in some ways.
ReplyDeleteWe're posting on the same thing tomorrow. I want my guys to come to yours to be schooled- such great activities going on! We did the edu-cite interactive map and were really impressed with it. So simple and clear. We were only going to spend a few weeks on this, but I can see it lasting much longer (as most of our studies do!)
ReplyDeleteThank you, Claire! It's very encouraging to receive such approving nods from a fellow homeschooling mother who is doing wonderful work with her own children at home. :-) The website is wonderful, isn't it? I'm also anticipating that our Marco Polo study will take a long time to complete. I look forward to reading your post tomorrow!
ReplyDeletePizza, soothing music, polymer clay... I want to go to your homeschool!
ReplyDeleteThank you for your encouraging comment, Jennifer. I really appreciate it. :-)
ReplyDeletewe just started studying Marco polo at home too. Thanks for the you tube link we spent the morning watching it:)
ReplyDeleteGlad to be of help! :-)
ReplyDeleteLovely to see youngsters enjoying art
ReplyDeleteWhat great activities. I love the books you all read.
ReplyDeleteBlessings, Dawn
Hwee, as always, your posts are wonderful. Pinning to the Look What We Did- History board. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteVery exciting - actually learning about Marco Polo without just reading it in a textbook. Although I always found him fascinating when I was in school.
ReplyDeleteLinking in after you at Virtual Refrigerator.
Blessings,
Janis www.janiscox.com Author/Ilustrator of Tadeo Turtle
Papa Piccolo is one of our favorite books. My dad always says the more senses involved in a learning experience the better it is learned. I think you had that covered very well.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Janis and Julie, for stopping by and leaving your kind comments. I've always been fascinated by Marco Polo and his travels eversince I was a child, so this is a good chance to study him in a way that I would have liked to as a child. There is so much to learn about him and of the places he traveled through.
ReplyDeleteWow, what great activities! I especially love learning how to make jewelry from a real expert. What fun! Thanks for linking up to the Culture Swapper! It's fun to see how your journey following Marco Polo is progressing.
ReplyDelete