The Italian Experience - The Disaster

For some reason, we did not study the infamous eruption of Mount Vesuvius when we studied Ancient Rome.  Luckily, we get to do it this time round because of Marco Polo.  Who would have guessed?

We started by reading many books about the event in Pompeii:

 

This was followed by several cross-curricula activities from this book, which included learning about Pliny the Elder's route (geography), reading a play version of the story of Pliny the Elder as narrated by his nephew (comprehension, drama, reading), and labeling parts of a volcano (earth science).  The more hands-on activity was the making of a topologic map, 3D model of Mount Vesuvius.

Tiger used some terracota-coloured clay and worked layer-by-layer using the copy of the topologic map provided in the book.  The final result:

Originally, I only intended to watch one documentary, but we ended up watching three different ones to get a really good understanding of the event from different perspectives:

With a good understanding of the event, we were able to better appreciate our visit to the Life and Death: Pompeii and Herculaneum exhibition that is currently showing at the British Museum.

While we were there, Tiger attended a full-day workshop related to the exhibition.  At the workshop, the children were introduced to several re-enactors who took on different roles as people who were in Pompeii on that fateful day in AD79: Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger, a freed slave girl, a rich merchant, a priestess, a slave.  Through their interaction with these different characters inside the exhibition hall, the children were given good insights into life in Pompeii at that time, how people lived, their different roles, and how the Roman societal hierachy was organised.

We enjoyed our visit to the British Museum so much that we are going to relive the experience on the big screen next week!

This post is linked up to:

1. June Culture Swapper 
2. History and Geography Meme #78
3. Hobbies and Handicrafts - June 14
4. Collage Friday - Try Not to Destroy Their Imagination
5. Weekly Wrap-Up: Camp Week
6. Science Sunday: Happy Father's Day
7. Hip Homeschool Hop - 6/18/13

Land and Water

As part of our geography study (via Marco Polo) these days, we have been paying more attention to the various geography terms such as 'peninsula', 'island', 'bay', etc.  While we are still in Italy in our study, we have come across these terms as they apply to the various parts of the country.  For example, the mainland of Italy is a peninsula, while Sicily is an island, whereas Naples is situated by a bay.  I thought I could get away with a quick review using an exercise from the Great Map Games book, but I soon realised that Tiger could do with a better understanding of the difference between land forms and water forms.

From his Montesori preschool days, I recall an exercise that will teach this concept in a tactile manner.  Now that Tiger is older and more capable of creating materials for his own use (as opposed to his preschool years when I had to make most of the Montessori materials), I printed off the freely available Land Form Cards and explained to him that we were (mostly he was) going to make 3D models of those land and water forms.  Tiger has always been enthusiastic about clay modelling, so he was happy to take on the project.

The bag of Sculptamold that had been sitting in the cupboard for a few years finally saw the light of day!  In its dry form, Sculptamold is very much like shredded paper pulp.  After adding water and mixing it well, following instructions on the bag, it becomes very clay-like yet much more malleable.

It didn't take Tiger too long to complete the ten models.  We waited 24 hours to let the clay dry completely.

The following day Tiger painted the models with acrylic paint.  We left the models to dry for another two hours.

The real fun began when the models were completely dry.  Using a jug of water added with blue food colouring, Tiger poured carefully into each tray.

The strong contrast in colours between the land (brown) and water (blue) makes it very easy and clear for the child to distinguish between land forms and water forms.  Therefore, Tiger had no problem to identify them correctly with their corresponding nomenclature cards.

I was wondering whether there was any need to extend the activity when Tiger suggested that he wanted to try to identify the trays while being blindfolded.  This way, he would only rely on his sense of touch in the identification process.

After Tiger called out the correct names for each tray several times, I changed the game a little by reading out the definitions of each land/water form instead.  Still with his blindfold on, Tiger now has to: (1) identify which land/water form matches the definition that I give, and (2) find the corresponding tray by touch.  He did well to identify them all correctly.

Tiger must have done the identification game at least five times in a row.  I think by now he has a pretty good idea about the ten common land and water form, if their physical forms were not already etched in his mind.  He was having so much fun that he didn't want the exercise to end, so I printed off additional definition cards, mixed them up with the other two sets of cards that were used earlier, and asked him to categorise and label everything.

Tiger had to do the exercise on the floor as there were too many labels and trays to fit on the table.  Here is a close up of his floor work:

Over the next few days, Tiger was out in the garden most afternoons, mostly digging on his patch.

When I went to see what he was doing, he showed me the archipelago that he made:

On another day, he was again found digging on his patch with intense concentration:

When I went near, he told me that he had been creating a peninsula and an island:

Given a choice, I personally would much rather see my child demonstrate his knowledge this way than by taking a paper test.  I sometimes get asked the question "How do you know that your child is learning?"  My answer has always been that I know from observing his behaviour and attitude, from listening to what he tells me, and from looking closely at what he does.  The above is an example of how I know that he has internalised what he has learnt.

Having said that, we still used the command cards for a thorough review.  The majority of the questions were answered orally with Tiger using the globe to find his answers.

For my own peace of mind, I asked Tiger to:

1. draw and label the different land/water forms on the paper as we went along, 
2. identify each land form with its corresponding water form (e.g. straits and isthmus, bay and cape, gulf and peninsula), and
3. tell me the difference and similiarities between each pair.

This post is linked up to:
1) Look What We Did!
2) History and Geography Meme: Learning History and Science Together
3) Hobbies and Handicrafts - May 17
4) Collage Friday - Math, Appliances, and Other Goodies
5) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One Where I Didn't Go to Nashville
6) Science Sunday: Tiger Hunt
7) Hip Homeschool Hop - 5/21/13
8) Homeschool Science Share & Tell - May 2013 edition

Traveling with Marco Polo: Venice

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

Inner learning and synthesis

"Creativity is nurtured by freedom and stifled by the continuous monitoring, evaluation, adult-direction, and pressure to conform that restrict children’s lives today. "

-- Peter Gray, article here.

I'm been relatively quiet on this blog lately, not because life hasn't still continued for us but because I'm still learning to understand the changes that are taking place in our homeschooling approach.

You see, once I've let go of my lesson plans, I am not entirely sure how to make sense of the spontaneous and unplanned learning that is taking place in front of me.  This is all very new to me, so I am very much a new learner in this sense.

Another new learning for me is to have patience.  As there is now no specific objective boxes to tick, I no longer have means to report that Tiger has learnt such-and-such knowledge in say, two days, or that he has completed five pages of certain workbooks.  What has changed is that Tiger's learning now appears to me to be more like pieces of puzzles - somewhat disjointed but all belonging to the same big picture nonetheless, even though where each piece belongs is not very obvious at the moment.  Therefore, now it takes much longer for me to piece together the seemingly random activities that he does with his time to get a sense of where he is taking them.  His learning process is a bit of a mystery to this very systematic, squential Mum, but it all makes perfect sense to him.

One example that I can discuss here with some clarity, after two weeks of observation, is this whole theme/idea/project of war (or what I currently group under "Classical Civilisations" for the benefit of my own understanding).

The following are the activities that I have observed Tiger doing on his own accord over a period of two weeks:

1) playing with the camera to make videos;
2) watching more documentaries on Greek and Roman battles;

• The Barbarian West
• The Battle of Gaugamela
• The Battle of Thermopylae

3) clay modeling;
4) playing with toy soldiers and building blocks;
5) playing ches;
6) making armour and weapons out of cardboard; and
7) reading books.

Seem pretty random, don't you think?  However, then a few other things happened that gave me a glimpse into how Tiger is connecting the different dots together.  One of those activities is him making his own short film of the battle scene reenactments using his toy soldiers:

When Tiger realised that he did not have any modern toy soldiers to make a more modern battle scene (after watching The Battle of Waterloo 1815), he decided to make some out of modeling clay.  He declined all my suggestions and help, and figured out by himself how to mould the clay into the soldiers in different positions.  If he hasn't been watching so many documentaries and reading so many books on this topic, he probably would have some difficulty to fashion the various positions without any references.

Another activity that reveals to me that learning is continuously taking place within Tiger is through our informal discussions, which can go from talking about the hows and whys of battle successes due to strategy and positioning, to the more philosophy questions such as whether wars could ever be justified.  It would have been easier for me to record that Tiger has completed two dozen pages of history questionnaires, or that he has sat through three history lectures, but that clearly is not how he learns best.  We sat through the first lecture of The Greek and Persian Wars from The Great Courses but Tiger does not like the feeling of having someone talk at him all the time, so that has gone onto the back burner for now.

Of course, in the past two weeks Tiger has been engaged in many other activities besides the ones I've listed here.  This is only a snapshot of the activities that I have been able to make sense of within my mind after two weeks of observation.  Other observations will follow once I am able to see how they fit into a bigger picture.

This blog post is linked up to:
1) History and Geography Meme #42
2) Enchanted Thursdays Blog Hop #32
3) Homeschool Mother's Journal: September 21, 2012
4) Collage Friday
5) Favourite Resources: September 21, 2012
6) TGIF Linky Party #48
7) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with the Party

Character modelling

Although we do most of our art learning at home, whenever there are interesting sessions conducted by artists working in other medium, we go and learn from them.

We spent a very interesting afternoon learning the art of modelling characters from a sculptor.  Even though Tiger has enjoyed the tactile experience of modelling clay and plasticine at home, this was the first time he has a specific tuition for three hours by a practising sculptor.

Not only did Tiger learn new modelling techniques, but he was also guided in useful sculpting skills such as using various modelling tools to make detailed markings, how to remove excess clay efficiently while considering overall form.  I learnt a lot about clay modelling from the session too.

 

While Tiger was busy with the lesson, I was busy chatting with the lady who also happens to be the principal of an art school in London!  We had a good exchange about what we each do in terms of art.  Tiger did well for himself by impressing her with his concentration and ability that she said she would make an exception for him to be enrolled in a similar class at her school that only admits teenagers.  I have looked into the class, but found the cost to be beyond our budget at the moment so Tiger will continue to learn at home to develop his skills all round. 

The principal sent me a very nice email after the workshop:

Dear ..., 

It was very nice to meet you and Tiger yesterday at the workshop, I hope you had a good journey home.

Tiger's work impressed me very much, I attach some photographs.

Do visit our School of Art whenever convenient for you, you will be very welcome.

All best wishes, I.L.

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