Getting to Know Dickens

After spending two Christmases of reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, we finally have arrived at the Victorian period in our history study to justify spending more time learning about the man and his novels that serve as very strong social commentaries of what life was like in the Victorian times for the poor.

One of the Museum of London's workshops, Dickens in context, serves as the perfect tool for us to combine the study of both history and literature in the same session.

The workshop started with a drama session where 'Charles Dickens' was in one of his press conferences, with the children participating as reporters who asked him questions (prepared by the museum beforehand) that were designed to weave together his life story, the novels that he had written, and the Victorian society in general.

The session was cleverly designed to engage the children, so that everyone could get a really good idea of the context of Dickens' novels and characters even if they have not read all his work.  Another point of interest is that we met Lucinda and her daughter at the workshop, who are both as lovely in person as they are on her blog.

The group then had a good hour to explore the People's City gallery, which showcase many artefacts that trace the rapid economic and social changes that took place in London from the Victorian times to the beginning of the Second World War.

The rest of the day was spent in an object-handling session where the group was shown real Victorian objects that they were to guess/identify the items and what they were used for, as well as the socio-economic class that those objects would have belonged to.  The class divide was very pronounced in the Victorian times -- people today are still as obsessed about it although most have learnt to be more discreet -- so it was not difficult to figure out that the chimney broom and the shoe-shine box belonged to the working class while the hand mirror and the jewelry box belonged to the mid-to-upper middle class.

All the work done by the group that morning, i.e. the drama session, gallery viewing, object handling, culminated in a final, creative writing session where the children were given a short excerpt of one of Dickens' novels (each group had a different excerpt) and a visual representation of a Victorian scene (again, each group had a different picture), and they had to do a simple analysis of his literary techniques before attempting to write their own version of a descriptive paragraph in the Dickensian style in 10 minutes.

The group was of mixed ages (the children were 10 to 14 years old) and mixed abilities (some children are natural writers, while one or two struggle with putting words on paper), as is typical of homeschooling groups, so this final exercise was quite challenging for a few in the room but everyone attempted it in good spirits and was happy to share their individual writing with one another at the end.  I was very impressed with the positive attitude of everyone in the room, and even more with the quality of the paragraphs each one wrote in the short time.

The Greatest Detective

A Sherlock Holmes pantomine kicked off our interest in the most famous detective who was invented in Victorian England.

We had never watched a pantomine before (because they can be too silly for our taste) so I took a risk by taking Tiger to see this outdoor show since it could potentially turn him off the whole idea of Sherlock Holmes before we even got started.  Luckily Tiger found this production to be quite funny (his own humour is quite quirky so it is often hard to tell which way things would go) so that was a good start.

Tiger then worked his way through the numerous related books (fiction and non-fiction)

that are related to the Sherlock Holmes exhibition at the Museum of London.

The exhibition is a must for fans of the great detective, of which Tiger is one.  It contains many of the memorabilia of the characters in the story, the background of the story (i.e. Victorian England), and some facts about Arthur Conan Doyle.

While we were there, Tiger also attended a creative writing workshop, which started with the workshop leader sharing his method of writing fiction with the children, highlighting techniques such as characterisation and plot development.  The children then spent some time in the People's City gallery, specifically the Victorian Walk, where they would experience the sights and sounds of a replica Victorian quarter, in order to get some inspiration for their writing exercise when they returned to the workshop room.

Tiger learnt a few tricks for writing fiction, and told me that he enjoyed the session but what he has been enjoying the most is reading all the adventures of Sherlock's younger years.

Queen Victoria and Her Empire

Two summers ago, we spent a day visiting Queen Victoria's holiday home, Osborne House, on the Isle of Wight.

We finally come to properly studying the Victorian period this time round.   There is so much to learn about this period that I foresee us spending much of this term learning about the various aspects of this significangt time in history.

We started learning about Queen Victoria through various books and documentaries.

Having had some idea of the Victorian times, we looked through some source information on Queen Victoria before I asked Tiger to write a short narration from a two-page spread from our copy of History: The Definitive Visual Guide, and to practise tracing the map of the UK using the relevant outline map from this book.  The idea for map tracing comes from another homeschooling family.  Tiger really enjoys drawing maps so the activity is a good fit for him.  We have since made map tracing a regular activity.

One of the most significant aspects of Queen Victoria's reign was her enormous empire.

We attended a one-day workshop on The Impact of Empire, with the morning session starting at the Museum of London where the children were introduced to how the British empire developed from the Roman times to the Victorian times.

This was followed by an afternoon session at the Museum of London Docklands where the focus of the session became one of trade across the empire and the lives of sailors (mostly from India) living in the Docklands at that time.

This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 1/13/15
2. History & Geography Meme # 149
3. My Week in Review #20
4. Collage Friday - Homeschool Moms: Are We Equipped to Handle the Hard?
5. Weekly Wrap-Up: The one with the major curriculum change

End of Rome

We are putting an end to Ancient Rome, having been deeply involved with this topic for over a year now.  To be honest, I'm all 'romaned out'.

This week we finally started on The Story of the World Volume 2.  The first chapter is, alas, the Romans!  That serves both as a recap on what we did last year, as well as a logical lead into the era that followed the fall of the Roman Empire.  Incidentally, the second chapter starts to mention Britain (the Celts), which sees us again going through a quick review of Romano Britain.

Our Roman adventures came to an end after we had compelted the following activities:

1) Field Trip

We attended a two-hour handling session at the Museum of London where the Curator of Human Osteology gave us a very detailed walk through of the Roman human remains from the museum's collection, including the actual skeleton of the Spitalfields Lady!  

Using the numerous actual 2000-year-old Roman skeletal parts, the curator showed us how archaeologists and forensic scientists determined the age of the bones, the state of health of the person, what kind of disease or illness the person had, the cause of death, how the bone structures reveal where the illness occured in the body of the person while he/she was alive.

 

This session was very different from the other history trips we have been on so far because of its scientific focus.  While we have been on several field trips that looked into deaths and burials -- where the emphasis was on using evidence gathered from burial sites and burial goods to determine the living conditions of the deceased -- this was the first time we hear an expert tell us about the scientific aspects of history and archaeology.  We were also told about how carbon dating actually works and what its shortfalls are in terms of exactness in dating.  Apparently when using carbon dating methods, one must give an allowance of +/- 500 years!

2) Roman Food
I made this Roman stew.  The result turned out much like a cross between lentil porridge and a mushy soup.  It sounds disgusting, but both Tiger and I ate it and we thought it was ok.  Not our favourite, but it was edible.  Tiger rated it 3 out of 5, which means he is happy to eat it once but not again.  We got through the meal by imagining ourselves to be Roman soldiers who had been marching for 18 miles that day and were happy to be given mushy food at the end of a long march.  Despite its unappetizing appearance, the stew was extremely filling.  In this sense, it would definitely be an appropriate 'army food' for a very hungry Roman soldier!

3) Review
We worked through all the materials here, as a final review of what we have learnt so far.  For those who are not familiar with the UK mainstream education system, here is a quick explanation of what the term KS (key stages) mean.


This post is linked up to several blog hops, where you can visit to see what other homeschoolers have been busy with.

All About the Romans

Tiger began his history study (both World History and British History) last September.  Even since then, he had been fascinated by the Romans.  We use Our Island Story as our main text for British History.  With this book, after the first two chapters about ancient Britons (basically the Celts), we quickly moved on to the Roman invasion and their 300+ years of occupation in Britain.  From that point on, Tiger was hooked.  He was mesmerised by the Roman army, he wanted to know all about how the Romans lived; we visited many Roman sites within travelling distance to us; he learnt all about the Romans' major battles; he learnt who the major Roman emperors were.....  He became very engrossed in everything that has to do with the Romans.

Hence, we started Year 1 with the Romans.

Our World History text, The Story of the World Volume 1, covers the Romans towards the end of the book.  By the time July came along and we were ready to make the most of the summer weather, we still had Ancient Rome to complete.

Therefore, after our summer break, the only yet-to-be completed part of Year 1 was Ancient Rome.  I really want to start Year 2 in September without anything being carried over from Year 1, so we had an intensive few weeks concentrating on the study of Ancient Rome.

1) Books

Given Tiger's interest in Ancient Rome, it was very easy for him to read all the following supplementary books:

 

 

 

 

2) Field Trips

a) We visited a gallery of Roman classical sculptures where we spotted the busts of Claudius, Hadrian and Julius Caesar, among many other sculptures of mythical heroes.

b) A walk around the British Museum's Roman Empire gallery and Roman Britain gallery never failed to inspire us to learn more about the ancient times, especially when the visit was enhanced by a knowledgeable guides who told us: (1) a quick summary of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire using relevant gallery collections; and (2) all about how the culture and religion of Rome were adapted into the Romano Britain culture.

c) Tiger dressed up as a Roman Legionary when we spent another day in London, visiting the area that was known as Londonium during Roman times.

All that remains of the Romans in this area was parts of what had been a Roman fortress wall.

d) We also watched a show of gladiator games at an arena that was recreated at the exact location of what remained of the only arena in Londonium.  The ruins of the actual arena are now preserved at the basement of the Guildhall Gallery.

While waiting for the gladiator games to start, we strolled along a Roman street where reenactors recreated the atmosphere of Londonium by dressing up in Roman costumes and 'working' at different stores to show people some of the items that were traded in Roman times.

An hour later, the main action started.  I had some reservations about taking Tiger to watch a gladiator game, knowing the violence that it involved, even at a reenactment.  However, at the ticketing office I was told that it was a family show and that children younger than Tiger had attended the earlier show in the day.  Tiger had read about the gladiators but I still felt the need to explain to him that what we were about to see was a reenactment, much like the jousting knights we had watched a few months ago, and that nobody would get hurt in the show, but they had to pretend to be so because they were actors acting their parts.  Most importantly, the 'blood' he would see in the show was actually made from red colouring.

After much prep talk and a "Mum, you don't have to tell me all this.  I knew it already." from Tiger, the 90-minute show began with much fanfare and pomp.  The show was very well done, as I could feel the 'bloodthirstiness' of the spectators, which could be easily extrapolated into the late Roman period when the decline of morality marked the beginning of the end for the Roman empire.

3) Hands-on activities

On a more civilised level, we did a few hands-on activities for this topic.

Back home, I pulled out a Gladiators book to consolidate what we have learnt about this very uniquely Roman phenomenom.  This book, or rather this pack, is more than a book.  Tiger spent a few hours going through everything and learning about the structure of the Colosseum.

Tiger also made a Roman tile and a Roman room.  Tiger has become increasingly independent such that he no longer needs my help putting these items together.  When I offered to help, I was told, "No, thank you.  I know exactly what I am doing."