Friday 28 June 2013

The Italian Experience: Ready to Depart

I haven't expected us to be spending so much time just learning about Italy.  It has been four months since we first started with Marco Polo and we haven't even left Italy yet!


Luckily our current approach to home education gives us the flexibility to study a topic in depth without having to rush through it.  However, I think we have had enough of Italy by now so I am happy to report that we are finally wrapping up at a suitable place - by the coast.

We were at Canterbury over the weekend where we walked along the Roman city wall.


We were on our way to see the Reculver Towers and Roman Fort.  It location is stunning and right by the coast.  Very appropriate for a departure by sea (as Marco Polo did when he first left Venice), don't you think?


Before we departed, we had a very delicious meal at an Italian restaurant.  The food was so good that I completely forgot to take photos of them until we had finished eating... Fortunately, the restaurant has a shop section that sells food-related items from Italy so I took a few shots of the wide variety of food stuff there:


Since we have been all over the place (in time), reading the historical fiction recommended by Julie from Highhill Education has been very useful to take us back to 13th century Venice.


We are going to take a break from The Travels of Marco Polo for now and resume his journey in the autumn.  You can read all of our Italian Experiences with him here.

This post is linked up to:
  1. June Culture Swapper
  2. History and Geography Meme #80
  3. Hobbies and Handicrafts - June 28
  4. Collage Friday - Being Intentional About Doing Nothing
  5. Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with Gymnastics Camp
  6. Hip Homeschool Hop - 7/2/13

11 comments:

  1. What wonderful tie-ins, with the Canterbury visit and the Italian meal. It's great to be able to linger on an interesting topic, isn't it?
    We finally started Marco Polo this week! You've given lots of inspiration, thank you.

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  2. You're welcome, Lucinda. I'm excited to see another family learning about Marco Polo and am looking forward to your learning adventures of this topic. I can't believe we've taken months just on his home country. I expect you'll catch up with, if not overtake, us on this journey soon enough. :-)

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  3. I love the flexibility you have in the way you study. We seem to have lost a bit of that over the past two years and now that it's summer I'm seeing how much I miss it. Although I have topics I would like to cover this fall I prefer reading about them as books come available from the library, whatever the order, and as the kids interests direct. We have already started studying India, but the kids haven't realized it yet. We are just reading fun books and watching some mythology cartoons.

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  4. Thanks, Julie. It's a difficult balance between completing a topic so as to move on to the next, and diving in deep and taking our own time with it. Tiger reads many other "off-topic" books on his own as well, and I try not to discourage him from doing that because it's not what we're officially learning at the moment. Learning takes on many different forms, so it's good that homeschooling allows for much flexibility in terms of interests and materials. :-)

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  5. What great experiences you have provided. Thanks for sharing them with us.

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  6. I'm giggling that your just now taking off, following in Marco Polo's footsteps. You've certainly covered Italy very thoroughly! I'm really looking forward to all that is coming next. I hope you and your family have a lovely summer, relaxing and having lots of lovely fun!

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  7. You're welcome, Phyllis. I'm glad you're finding them useful. :-)

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  8. Clarie - I know...! Our stay in Italy has certainly gone on for much longer than I had intended. Oh well, at least we made the most of that time to learn about things that are closely and remotely related to Italy. I'm not very good at relaxing but I shall try... :-)

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  9. That Roman Fort looks like something my kids would love to visit.

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  10. Sigh, I wish I could take my kids to see a Roman wall......

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  11. That is so wonderful that you have actual Roman ruins to visit. And great that you have the flexibility to really explore a topic in depth. Thanks for sharing at the Culture Swapper!

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