What Came Out of the Crimean War

Even with the relative calm at home in the UK during the Victorian Era, war was still being waged by British troops overseas, the most well-known being the Crimean War and the two Boer Wars.

Between the two significant wars that took place in the Victorian period, we choose to focus on the Crimean War as it seems to have more far-reaching effects on the social and medical fronts than the Boer Wars.  The first example of which is Lord Alfred's Tennyson's famous poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade, that describes the heroic but tragic fate of the British calvary in the Battle of Balaclava.

We did not go into a full analysis of the poem but only listened to it a few times to hear its meter and rhythm, then briefly discussed the poem's content and background in relation to how war was fought in the Victorian times.  Tiger has already learned about the Battle of Balaclava on his own, so he is very familiar with the geographical and historical background to the poem and is able to put in context the fatal situation described within.  He did, however, have a little play with the poem by changing its title to "The Charge of the Lunch Brigade", and altering a few words to suit the new title.

Once we got past the horror of the battle, we turned our attention to the development of nursing care that took place as a result of this war, in the form of Florence Nightingale.

Florence Nightingale's story is a very interesting one.

Even as a child living in the Far East, I had heard of "the lady with the lamp",

and of her contributions to the nursing practice.

Naturally, we had to go and see for ourselves who this remarkable Victorian woman is, so we went to The Florence Nightingale Museum, which is situated by the St. Thomas' Hospital, the largest teaching hospital in London.

When we got to the museum, we first had the pleasure of an audience with Miss Nightingale,

where she told the children the story of her life and how she got into nursing despite her family's opposition and the prevailing social pressure of the time for her to remain an upper-middle class socialite.

 
The children then had a few worksheets to do, where they had to go to different "stations" located in different parts of the museum to look at some replica items (such as the Military Cross, the Victoria Cross, copies of Victorian paintings depicting the conditions of the military hospitals, Nightingale's photos from her pre- and post-nursing days) and note down their significance in relation to the Crimean War, as well as to Florence Nightingale's efforts at social change.

After the workshop, we had time to look around the museum at our leisure.

The museum is one of the smallest we have visited so far but we are very impressed with its layout and the amount of real artefacts (such as  Nightingale's actual nursing uniform, the medical supplies she first took to Scutari, the actual lamp that she carried on her night rounds).

The more I learn about the Victorians and the society at that time, the more I admire Florence Nightingale's determination and courage to break free from societal expectations to pursue what she felt was her calling and in the process, transformed the very notion and practice of nursing care.


This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 3/17/15
2. Finishing Strong - Homeschooling the Middle & High School Years #47
3. History and Geography Meme #156
4. Collage Friday: The Hidden Benefits of Homeschool
5. Weekly Wrap-Up: The one with the taste of spring
6. My Week in Review #29

Anatomy of a Self-Determined Education: an Overview

Most non-homeschooling people find the idea that we don't follow the National Curriculum, or indeed, any curriculum at all, to be incredulous.  To these people, the idea that there are those who actually know what is important and personally relevant to their own lives or circumstances is beyond belief.

The response I hear most often is, "Without using any curriculum or guideline, how do you know what to teach your son?"

The truth is, I don't teach him.  I stopped teaching him about 18 months ago.  My son basically teaches himself.

When I say that my son teaches himself, the only people who know how it works first-hand -- because they have seen the process themselves -- are Tortoise, my mother-in-law, and I.  It is certainly not a case of my piling a stack of textbooks or 'required readings' in front of Tiger and making him work through them -- although I'm sure this is what some people think happens in our homeschool.  For some reason -- maybe schooling has trained it out of most people -- many people find it hard to believe that anyone, let alone a young child, has the passion and motivation to learn widely and deeply without being told to do so by anyone.

I spoke briefly about the process as applied to maths, but I think it will be more clearly demonstrated by sharing how Tiger pursues military history, a topic that is neither examinable nor taught in the National Curriculum, GCSEs, A-levels, or in most universities around the world.  If we were to take the traditional curriculum route, we would have hit a brick wall very quickly because there is absolutely no guidance whatsoever for children who are interested in this topic.  Does it mean that Tiger is wasting his time learning about something that is irrelevant because it's not on any curriculum?  Well, try telling military historians or anyone who's involved in the military industry that their professions are a waste of time, and I'm sure some very interesting conversations will follow.

While a lack of specific guidelines (bad news) may deter some people from pursuing the topic further, Tiger is actually interpreting the situation to be a lack of boundaries (good news) so that he is free to decide how far and wide he wants to go with this. I suspect that his optimissm at learning may be attributed to the fact that he has never attended school and therefore has never had anyone told him where the limitations of learning (which often disguise as the "syllabus") are.

In my attempt to recording Tiger's self-driven education, specifically in the area of military history where the process is most obvious since he is 100% in the driver's seat, I shall be writing a few posts to record my observations.

My role these days has become less of a 'teacher' and more of:

• an observer - who gets out of Tiger's way to let him teach himself
• a consultant - who asks questions like "Do you think this book/event/workshop/lecture/article/programme is interesting or useful to what you're learning?"
• a chauffeur - who takes Tiger where he needs to be for a related event
• a P.A. - who organises Tiger's diary so that he can attend all the events that he wants to go to
• a sponsor - who pays for all the books/events/workshops/materials that Tiger says he needs for his study

So, without a syllabus/outline/guideline to follow, what has Tiger covered in the area of military history, and how?

A Broad View
It appears to me that Tiger first gets an overview of the various aspects of military history by reading very broadly and widely.

The broad interest then extends to modern warfare, which Tiger then continues to read about and update himself on the development of battle tactics and weaponry used.

The information that Tiger learned from books leads him to search for more online, and often leads him to documentaries such as:

1.  Battlefield (he watched the entire six series)
2.  20th Century Battlefields (watched all eight episodes)

Leadership and Strategy
Names, places, and strategies (or mistakes) of all the battles are mentioned in the various sources from the "Overview" phase above.  Such mentions inevitably leads Tiger to want to know more about the men behind these decisions that shaped the world.

Tiger's research in this area often involve reading books, articles, and magazines.

He also often plays war games.  As in chess, he often plays different scenarios out on the board by himself before engaging either Tortoise or I in the games.

We started with Risk, but Tiger soon got the hang of the game and quickly moved on to the more complex game of Axis and Allies 1942.  The Axis and Allies board game is stretching Tiger's learning needs in many ways as he has yet to gain a consistent stream of successful campaigns when playing against Tortoise.  The game is set to keep him busy for a while.

In the next few posts, I will write about some of the details that Tiger goes into for his military history study and how I provide support when asked.

The Other Scottish King: Robert the Bruce

England feud with Scotland started with Edward I's compaign against Scotland and continued into the reign of Edward II.

While Edward I was pitted against William Wallace, Edward II's nemesis came in the form of Robert the Bruce.

Robert the Bruce's rise to power wasn't straightforward, as he had to contest with his Scottish rival, John Comyn, for the kingship.  He eventually murdered John Comyn in the process.


Robert the Bruce's greatest victory against the English was at the Battle of Bannockburn.

After watching the videos, Tiger was inspired to make a Scottish armour out of a few pieces of red cloth, aluminum foil, and some masking tape.

Naturally, there has to be an epic battle to put the armour to good use.  This time Tiger took the role of  a Scot who was killed by the pike on the battlefield.  It has taken a few years of mock battles for Tiger to be able to take on the role of one who is defeated.  Compared to the previous few years when he felt absolutely invincible (or that he could never be wrong about anything), he is starting to show some maturity and awareness of his own ego, and is ready to acknolwedge that he, like everyone else, has some areas of weaknesses.

This post is linked up to:

1. History and Geography Meme #107
2. Hip Homeschool Hop - 3/11/14
3. Entertaining and Educational - Art Masters 
4. Collage Friday - Homeschooling Girls and Boys
5. Weekly Wrap-up: The One with Cat Surgeries and Early Mornings
6. Homeschool Mother's Journal (3/15/14)

Battling with the Welsh

Before Edward I became "The Hammer of the Scots", he went hammering at the Welsh.  The way that he went about having an upper hand over the Welsh was to build a formidable fortress in the form of Conway Castle.

Given that the castle had been built for the purpose of battle, we were curious to about how its structure provided a strategic advantage to Edward I's victories over the Welsh. 

The Battle Castle series appears to be just what we need to learn about this.

I bought the DVD set and we've learnt loads watching the episode that is dedicated to examining Conway Castle.  After watching the documentary I thought we ought to do something hands-on, so I suggested that we build a model of a castle.

Tiger wanted to have reenactment battles with his model knights instead.  I am not a big fan of playing with model knights, to be honest.  Believe me, I have played with model knights and soldiers to reenact many, many, many (to the power of n) battles, from the ancient times to modern warfare.   Far too many than should be reasonably expected of a normal mother, really.

After my troops had surrendered (experience has taught me that it's the only way I could end the battles), we calmed ourselves down by making the model.  Homeschooling in this household involves much negotiation and give-and-take on both sides.

I used the model making sessions to have Tiger tell me what he has learnt about Conway Castle from the documentary that makes it a stronghold for Edward I's Welsh campaigns (in addition to Caernarfon Castle), its significant features, and how it compares to the 'standard' castle model that we were putting together.

The model was quite fiddly to put together, due to its many small parts and lack of assembling instructions.  However, we managed it in the end.  It's very satisfying when our models work!

This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop (2/18/2014)
2. History and Geography Meme: Country Studies
3. Collage Friday - Flip Flops and Challenge on Winter Break
4. Entertaining and Educational: National Engineer's Week
5. Weekly Wrap-up: The One with the Cheek Cells
6. Homeschool Mother's Journal (2/22/14)

Warwolf

During our visit to the Tower of London, we saw a reenactor dressed up as a medieval priest who gave us an overview of the history of the Tower as a royal palace, a prison, and a fortress.  A full-sized replica trebuchet was on site to demonstrate the power of this medieval siedge weapon.  It took five adults to launch the trebuchet.

The trebuchet is of special interest because the weapon has been traced back to being first used by Edward I during his siege of Stirling Castle.

While Tiger and I discussed about medieval siege weapons, I was given a quick education by Tiger of the differences between a trebuchet and a mangonel.  If your knowledge of medieval weaponry is like mine, i.e. that you think all catapulting machines work in the same way, you will benefit (as I have) from watching the two clips below:

1) Trebuchet

2) Mangonel

We learn much about the trebuchet from the following clip:

Why do we want to know so much about the trebuchet?  The main reason is that Tiger is passionate about everything that has to do with warfares and weaponry, historical and otherwise.  After hours of listening and watching experts talk about this medieval war machine, we decided it was time to build one ourselves.

It took us a few days to put the trebuchet together...

and when it was fully assembled, all of us thought it looked beautiful!

Naturally, we had to test whether it to see how good it is.

Unfortunately, our first few attempts at launching the trebuchet didn't go too smoothly.

The projectile either didn't go in an arc path, or was trapped in the launch net, or was launched backwards (gasp!).  It was slightly frustrating to have to work out what went wrong.  Not wanting to give up now, after we had spent so much time putting the model together, we pressed on with more tweaking, taking into consideration the following factors that might affect the success of our launch:

• tension of string
• length of string
• weight of projectile
• size of projectile
• weight of counter-weight load

It's very exciting when it finally worked!

 

Tiger spent the rest of the day trying to break the record for the longest distance the projectile would go.  So far, his record is at 17 feet.

When we heard that Warwick Castle has the world's largest working trebuchet, we had to go and see it at work!

Check out the size of these real, medieval trebuchet balls made of solid stone!

This post is linked up to:

1. History and Geography Meme #100
2. Collage Friday - Boxes, Schoolwork & Squirrels
3. Entertaining and Educational - Teaching Kids to Tie Their Shoes
4. Weekly Wrap-up: The One with No Time
5. Homeschool Mother's Journal {November 23, 2013}
6. Hip Homeschool Hop - 11/26/2013

Lighting His Own Fire

Some of you may have noticed that things seems to have slowing down here, at least in terms of my blogging about it.  Specifically, there has been a 'mysterious' two week break between my post about the water cycle experiments and that of Henry III.

Something is changing around here.  We are not doing as much as we did before -- that's how it feels to me anyway.  It feels as though we are not producing as much or as quickly as before.  Are we becoming slow learners... gasp!?

Another clue: has anyone else noticed that Tiger seems to be wearing the same camo clothes in most photographs?

No, you haven't seen it wrong.  Tiger lives in his camos, although he has more than one set of camo clothes, mind you, so he is not wearing the same clothes everyday although that must be very difficult to tell because camo prints tend to look the same (to me, anyway).  He has:

• a camo rucksack
• a pair of camo boots
• a camo beanie
• a camo hat
• a pair of camo gloves
• several pairs of camo socks
• several pairs of camo trousers
• a few camo T-shirts
• a camo jumper
• a camo coat
• a camo scarve
• camo stationery (ruler, pen, pencil, eraser, sharpener)

The boy loves his camos.  Now I need to find camo underwear and camo bedsheets to complete the look and I am just waiting for him to ask me to paint his room in camo shades.

What does this mean?  Isn't it just a normal nine-year-old boy's fascination with camos?

I thought so too, until I tried to piece together other bits and pieces of observations I have been making since July, to understand why we are currently working in such a "slow" pace.

Come to think of it, the trend had started before the summer holidays but had only became obvious to me when I let go of having daily lessons so that Tiger could be more say in how he wanted to spend his summer.  Other than going on holiday and working through the Art Summer School, Tiger was most often engaged in the following activities:

1.  Build a personal library.

Tiger's ever expanding personal library

Tiger has a bookshelf in his bedroom which he has been adding to at an alarming rate.  The shelf used to be filled with books from BFIAR and FIAR booklists, to be read as his bedtime stories.  This summer, Tiger has been picking out war/weaponry related books (see photo above) that I have had to pack all the previous FIAR books into storage to make space for these new books that he actually reads before bed and when he wakes up.

Seriously, who reads books like these for bedtime stories?!  Being the skeptical mum that I am, I flipped through the books and asked Tiger random questions about some parts of the books, just to make sure that he has actually read them and not just fibbing by looking at the pictures in the books.  Unbelievably, the boy has actually read them all, not just once but several times, evidenced by his ability to reference the exact page number of certain pieces of information that he gave me.


2.  Teach himself.
This is not new.  We watch documentaries all the time, but Tiger seems to have taught himself modern history (at least the military aspects of it) by watching the following since the summer:

1. Battlefield Britain (the entire series)
2. Battle of France
3. Battlefield: Series 1
4. Battlefield: Series 2
5. Battlefield: Series 3
6. The Cu Chi Tunnels
7. WWII Weapons (all 10 parts)
8. The Top Secret Soviet Weapon in the Cold War
9. Battle 360
10. Patton 360
11. The Korean War in Colour
12. Greatest Tank Battles
13. Dogfights - Season 1
14. Dogfights - Season 2
15. America: The Story of the US
16. WW2: The Mediterranean and North Africa
17. The Art of War: Sun Tsu
18. Weapons of Victory: Anti-Tank Guns
19. Battle of Arnhem
20. Sinking the Tirpitz
21. World War I: Battle of Falkland Islands
22. 20th Century Battlefields (the entire series)

While watching the documentaries, Tiger reenacts the battle scenes and war strategies shown on the screen with his toy troops.

I am quite amazed to see him finding his own hands-on way to engage himself in his learning.  I would not have been able to lead him to this due to a lack of expertise and interest on my part.

"A person's freedom of learning is part of his freedom of thought, even more basic than his freedom of speech.  If we take from soneone his right to decide what he will be curious about, we destroy his freedom of thought.  We say, in effect, you must think not about what interests and concerns you, but about what interests and concerns us."

-- John Holt

There is no curriculum for this, as far as I can tell, not for a nine-year-old anyway.  Hence, all of this is done oout of Tiger's own initiative.  He decides for himself what he wants to learn (i.e. which documentaries to watch - after seeking parental approval for each documentary), when he wants to learn, and how he learns best at the present moment (through staging the battle scenes rather than writing reports).


3.  Find ways to apply knowledge.
It is still an ongoing process, but I find it interesting to see what Tiger does with the information he is absorbing from the documentaries and books.  When his deep interest in military history became glaringly obvious in the summer, I was slightly concerned about whether Tiger was watching the above documentaries for entertainment, likened to brain-deadening TV watching.

However, my fears are allayed when I see how Tiger is finding different ways to apply what he is learning:
a) Through different strategy games
i) Battleship

ii) Axis and Allies starter set

iii) Chess
Tiger continues to attend his weekly chess club where he is coached alongside county players.  Even though chess has long been regarded as a strategy game, I was still surprised when Tiger explained to me, after a particularly successful session when he was the Undefeated-Champion-for-the-Night, that he applied the battle strategies he has learned from the books and documentaries to defeat the county players.

b) Through reenacting multiple battles
The first thing Tiger does on most mornings before breakfast: battles.

When there's  a break in-between lessons at home: battles.

If he's not doing something with Tortoise after dinner: battles.

c) Extending activities through battles.
I should know better than to second-guess the value of play, but when Tiger spends most of his time playing at the battles (which helps to explain why we aren't getting much else done in terms of "tangible output"), I feel I need more than blind faith to know that he is not simply wasting his time.

Luckily, when an adult looks hard enough and pays close attention to the child at play, she is very likely to find meaning in all of it.

i) Maths
How does maths come in?  I wasn't expecting to see this either, but Tiger has learnt the relationship between speed, distance, and time through his battles.  As his play becomes increasingly complicated -- with his invention of complex rules of engagement -- he needs to know how to calculate accurately the distance between his missle launch and its reach, how quickly troops can move before they engage in a face-to-face combat, etc.

Precise calculation is crucial in this case because an inaccurate move can have dire consequences, such as having to suffer the intolerable humiliation of being defeated by one's mother in a military showdown...

ii) Cartography
Tiger doesn't always use the maps that come with the soldiers sets.  Instead, he often prefers to draw his own map for the settings of his battles.

iii) Photography/filming
When Tiger is not too busy fighting battles, he takes photographs of the scenes with the intention to turn them into a stop motion film.

4.  It matters to him.
How do we know that it is a passion and not just a flight of fancy?  Besides the slightly obsessive, all-consuming nature of the child's engagement with the activity, probably the most revealing key is that the activity means a lot to the child.

"The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire."

--- Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch,

Supreme commander of Allied forces, World War One

Several weeks ago we were scheduled to attend a full-day history workshop.  The night before Tiger had a sudden fever so I decided that there was no way he would be well enough to go anywhere the next day.  As expected, Tiger was very upset as he went to bed that he was going to miss the workshop.  The following morning, he woke up unusually early (at 6am) to get himself ready to attend the workshop.  Unfortunately for him, the fever persisted so he had to stay at home.  For two hours he tried to convince me at 15-minute intervals that he was well enough to go. The poor boy burst into tears when his hardhearted mother said a resolute "No, you have to stay at home and rest."  I don't know of many children who would cry about missing a day of school.  Do you?

This post is linked up to:

1. Look What We Did 
2. History and Geography Meme #96
3. Collage Friday - A Productive Week
4. Entertaining and Educational - Learning with Music
5. Weekly Wrap-up: The One with the Battle Against Illness
6. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {October 26, 2013}
7. Hip Homeschool Hop - 10/29/2013