After exploring a Victorian town, we looked inside the homes of the Victorians:
and what they did for leisure:
Even after reading so many books about how the Victorians lived, we feel that we have learnt a fair bit more about the actual home lives of the Victorians from the documentary below:
There are also many Victorian houses, such as Audley End House,
dotted around to visit where we can see the interiors as well as some
of the toys that the Victorians used to amuse themselves with.
We decided to try our hands at making a few simple Victorian toys:
An interesting fact we learnt about the Victorians and their toys is how simple the mechanisms behind many of the toys are, yet they are full of simple fun and ingenuity, such as the following simple down-the-ramp box that uses the simple principle of shifting weight:
Another example is the simple wind-up toy made out of a spool, a rubber band, and a match stick:
While Queen Elizabeth II and her family spends much of their summer at Balmoral Castle these days, Queen Victoria and her family used to spend quite a bit of their summer at Osborne House. The size of the house is quite grand but the interior is quite sparse (when compared to the grandeur to the likes of the Rothschilds' house, Waddesdon Manor). As Queen Vic used to sometimes receive foreign guests at Osborne, you can still see evidence of some the royal receptions in the state rooms. Being "The Empress of India" for a time during her reign, it is no wonder to see much evidence of India in the paintings and some of the decorations of the house. The most impressive room is one that is modeled after a palace in Rajasthan.
Osborne House was mostly used as a family holiday home for Queen Victoria. There is a room dedicated to the family tree of Queen Vic and I find it fascinating to learn that all the European monarchies, since then up until now, are in one way or another inter-related through marriages.
There is a Swiss Cottage, which is similar to a children's play house, in the grounds of the garden. The difference is that this children's summer house is the size of a modern house these days. When I read a sign board in the house that states that the cottage was built to be used 'for the children's education', I started to fantasise about how lovely it would be if I had an entire building dedicated to homeschooling Tiger...
What's more, the children even had a garden plot the size of a small orchard to grow their own fruits, vegetables, and flowers.
Further along in the grounds, not far from the cottage, we stumble upon a child-sized barracks fully equipped model fort, child-sized real guns (cannons), guardroom, drawbridge magazine, etc. They were set up for the children to play battle games. I think of how most children these days, if they are lucky enough to not be poor, have to contend with playing with plastic model soliders for a battle game. The fort and guns I saw before me just seemed unreal.
There is a private beach at the end of a long coastal path from the garden, which can be seen from the house.
It looks like a modified carriage on rails that was winched into the sea so that the queen could enter the water after changing into her bathing costume. There was obviously a different set of modesty standards back then with regards to how a lady should dress while swimming at sea so women in Victorian days used to swim in the sea fully clothed, much like strict Islamic women these days.
Queen Victoria spent her last days at Osborne House and passed away there. After she died, her body was transported back to the mainland in the Alberta Deckhouse, which was also kept on the grounds.
This post is part of a series about our summer holiday on the Isle of Wight. You can read the entire series here.
This is a very well preserved windmill with all its machinery and interior intact. We were able to have a very good look at everything inside on its four floors and learned quite a bit about how the mill worked.
(2) St. Catherine's Oratory
This unassuming-looking oratory has quite an interesting history. Situated on a prehistoric burial mound, it was once used as chapel with an adjoining lighthouse.
Only the one tower is left so there isn't really much else to see at this site. However, since it is situated on top of a huge mound, it took us quite a while to make the steep climb. The surrounding scenery, as we saw on our way up, was breathtaking.
(3) Hanover Point
This is one of a few places on the island where we were told we could find fossilised dinosaur footprints. I was slightly skeptical as to whether we were going to see any by ourselves, since you really have to know what you're looking at to identify a genuine dino footprint from a clump of mud and stones.
We were there towards the end of the day and were able to catch a very beautiful sunset on the beach. The sign boards on the beach have very clear instructions and examples of how we can look out for fossils and dino footprints. The place is certainly rugged enough to have existed in prehistoric times. While Tiger spent his time digging on the beach, I spent my time looking for fossils. I managed to find a few fossiled seaweeds on rocks, and a few fossilised dino footprints. Wow, that was really amazing. What is really good about the experience is that people have followed the instructions on the sign boards and left the fossils on the beach, instead of taking them away, so that other people (like us) can enjoy the discovery for ourselves.
This post is part of a series about our summer holiday on the Isle of Wight. You can read the entire series here.
We were out at sea very briefly, on board a ferry to the Isle of Wight, an island off the south of England.
The
day we set off was glorious. I even saw a hovercraft! Tiger and I had
made model hovercrafts for a science experiment a few years ago but I
hadn't seen an actual craft before so it was very exciting for me to see
one.
We were on our way to stay at Carisbrooke Castle!
Yes, you've read it correct. We didn't just visit the castle, we
actually lived inside the castle for the entire duration of our stay on
the island.
Everyone was really excited about our stay in the castle. For Tiger, it was a dream come true. Eversince his fascination with knights and castles started a few years ago, he has been wondering about the possibility of actually living in one. Now he was going to stay in one for a few days!
Throughout our stay Tiger volunteered to be the "gatekeeper" who locked the gates each night and opened them each morning.
The castle is significant in many ways, with a very long history. It has changed hands many times, from being a Saxon fortress to the summer residence of Queen Victoria's daughter. I suspect that is why most parts of the castle have been kept in a very good condition.
Not only the outer buildings were well kept, much of the inner parts of the castle was also well preserved.
There were many guns positioned at different parts of the castle, signifying its use as a fortress for defence at different times in history:
Other than the very impressive structure of the castle, there is also a very well organised museum within the castle grounds, in a house that part of a series of buildings that were formerly home to lords and governors of the island.
Part of the museum was dedicated to the English Civil War, showing the causes of conflict as well as the different armours worn by soldiers on both sides of the conflict:
The relevance of the English Civil War to this castle is due to Charles I being imprisoned at the castle for a short while during the conflict.
The bedroom in which he slept in was preserved:
It seems that Charles I wasn't treated too badly during his imprisonment at the castle, as he had a bowling green built especially for him during his stay!
Charles I was later executed in London, following his defeat at the Civil War. A chapel was built inside the castle as a place of remembrance for him. A copy of his death warrant, signed by Oliver Cromwell, was on display on the wall in the chapel.
As we were staying in the castle, we had the run of the grounds after it was closed to public after 6pm. During our stay we spent every evening walking the grounds, just to feel the atmosphere of being in a castle after dark. We had close-up looks of a few interesting nocturnal creatures:
The most fascinating creature we saw must have been the common glow worm. Tortoise noticed them first along the castle walls but Tiger was the one to identify them. We had not seen them before in the open, so this was another exciting first for us:
Being the ever-curious homeschoolers that we are, Tiger and I felt compelled to learn more about the common glow worms from the BBC Nature website and from reading a short article about them.
The common glow worms can be found just about anywhere in the UK, but I have never seen them before this -- probably because we don't go looking for them after 10pm, which is the time that their glow is most obvious. While we were at it, we also learned a little about bioilluminescence.
It has been a fantastic stay at the castle for all of us, but we also spent much time exploring the Isle of Wight. I shall share about our other island adventures in later posts.
This post is part of a series about our summer holiday on the Isle of Wight. You can read the entire series here.
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.
Before we jumped into a full blown study of the Magna Carta, we visited several places associated with King John. First was Old Sarum, which King John once had a new hall built.
We walked around the whole site, surveyed the ruins and were fascinated by how much changes took place at the site since the Iron Age.
We wanted to learn more about the character of King John and the circumstances that led to the signing of the Magna Carta, so we played the King John: The Decision-Making Game. Tiger enjoyed this activity very much as it gave him an insight into both situational factors as well as personality considerations that determined how anyone (in this case, King John) makes decisions.
We also discussed the importance of reading different sources and contrasting interpretations of historical accounts before making our own minds up about historical events and characters. This view is supported by reading this particular article that suggests an alternative view to the usual 'bad King John' that almost everyone has of him.
Following our visit to Salisbury Cathedral where we saw one of the four original copies of the Magna Carta, Tiger read through the book that gave a full translation and interpretation of the document:
We also had a good read here which details the history of the Magna Carta. The map is particularly useful in showing the significance of various places in the UK in relation to the document.
Not all was peaceful after signing the Magna Carta, as shown by the Key Magna Carta Battles. Battles and warfare are the parts that interest Tiger the most, so we watched the following clip about the Battle of Bouvines:
King John also besieged the Rochester Castle in 1215, shortly after signing the Magna Carta. The siege is described below:
We visited it to see for ourselves the structure of the castle as well as how the siege would have occured there:
Another castle siege was at the Dover Castle in 1216-1217. Once again, we were able to visit this magnificent and historically significant castle to understand its structure and design.
The following documentary tells us more about the defence structure of Dover Castle:
A well researched and well illustrated book to learn about castle is the following:
Just out of curiostiy, we thought we would find out what King John's castle looked like:
To conclude, Tiger did narration and map work from the following books:
and read a few supplementary stories relating to the House of Angevin in the following books:
