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

Everything is a Mystery

If I remember correctly, the first mystery series that Tiger read was The Boxcar Children, when he was about six years old.  We started with the first book of the series, and Tiger enjoyed the story so much that we bought him the first set (books #1-4), followed by the second set (books #5-8).  Over the next few years, he has read and reread the children's adventures many times over, and I often wondered how I could bring the story more to life.  Imagine my excitement when, on one of our walks, we chanced upon a disused railway carriage, much like that found in the Boxcar Children!

We went close to the carriage, but didn't explore it because although it looked disused, it didn't look abandoned so we figured it might be in the process of being restored by train enthusiasts so we had better leave it alone.  Nonetheless, it's not everyday that we come up close to a disused train so stumbling upon it was quite an adventure in itself.

That set off Tiger's interest in books about adventures and mysteries, so we moved on to the Enid Blyton series, starting with The Secret Seven, followed by The Mystery Series, The Secret Series, and finally The Famous Five series that Tiger has read over and over again, even today.

With his strong interest in all things mystery-related, he took it upon himself to learn all about being a detective and how to solve mysteries...

while I busied myself searching through library catalogues for mystery stories.  Luckily, it seems that everybody loves a good mystery, so I didn't have to look too hard to find suitable stories for Tiger to read.

As I started paying attention to mystery-themed learning opportunities, I found that they are in abundance!  Almost anything can be turned into a mystery!

Take geography for example.  Tiger has had no problem working through the Great Map Mysteries where map skills were learnt through solving mysteries:

Even music-making can take on a mystery theme, as we discovered at a 'musical mystery' workshop at Wigmore Hall, where the children were first introduced to the idea of musical motifs and combinations of notes before they had to compose their own motifs in their own groups and putting the various motifs together at the end of the day into a combined composition.

The workshop was led by a few professional musicians who were assigned to each group to guide the children in creating their musical themes, in part to ensure that the final product didn't sound too "unmusical".

As we explored more into the realms of mysteries, we found ourselves getting drawn into the darker world of crimes and murders...

A small exhibition about crime fiction at the British Library

It was at The British Library that Tiger got a first real taste of hunting for clues (by following a trail that took us to various palces at the library) and using the information he collected to reduce who the real culprit was.

Encouraged by Tiger's crime-busting, mystery-solving enthusiasm, I started to look for more mystery-related materials for our normal lessons at home.  In our homeschool, theme-based lessons often provide the necessary variation and "sugar coating" required to get some of the fundamentals done.  Maths is one of them.

Tiger tried out the above data handling murder investigation with much keenness.  When given a purpose (the "why") to solving a numeric problem, Tiger is often more motivated to learn the skills required (in this case, data analysis for Year 9) than if I were to ask him to learn a maths concept without him understanding how that concept has any real-world applicability.

While Tiger needed more help with the above, he is currently happily working on his own through a more manageable set of maths mysteries (see below).

I am aware that there are different schools of thought with regards to the necessity of themed studies.   Some theorists love the idea of using themes to connect all the diverse and seemingly disjointed areas of learning, while others oppose the idea on the grounds that having the teacher organise all the learning opportunities into themes will rob children of the initiative to make the connections themselves.

While I don't go out of my way to organise themed studies for Tiger, I don't oppose to the use of themes either, especially when the learning opportunities happen quite naturally and with little effort on my part.


This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 10/14/14
2. Finishing Strong Week 33
3. Hearts for Home Blog Hop #87
4. Collage Friday: Homeschooling When Dad is Away
5. Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with the Frog Guts

Brave New Geography

Has anyone noticed something interesting in the news clip below?

Maybe the clip is too short.  Here's a still:

I learn something new everyday.  My latest new learning comes from the CNN -- not any dodgy pirate station, mind you -- that Hong Kong has decided to park itself on another continent!  Wow.  To think that all this time I have thought Hong Kong is located in Asia, a continent which is shaped quite differently from the South American continent!  Well, if the information comes from the CNN or the BBC, it must be right!  Aren't we lucky to have these brilliant, highly paid, highly qualified expert broadcasters tell us what's what in the world?!  How else would we have figured out that Hong Kong is actually located at where most people thought is Rio de Janeiro, a city of Brazil?

Hong Kong is part of China -- tell me that is still true -- I can't take another blow to my inadequate geography knowledge.  By extension of that logic, it should be located very near mainland China.  So.... looking at the CNN news map, the bigger country right by "Hong Kong", or what I thought used to be the country of Brazil, or is now China!!  Wow, the tectonic plates have shifted so much in the few hours that I was asleep, huh?!

It's troubling, isn't it?

Map coordinates

After learning about map scale, the next logical thing to learn is to read map coordinates.  Tiger read the following book for introduction to the topic:

As an introductory exericse, Tiger worked through a page to identify the points on a grid map with numbers on the x-axis and alphabets on the y-axis.  This was very straightforward because Tiger is already familiar with reading maps with such coordinate points.

Next, I introduced Tiger to another way to represent coordinate points -- using numbers in both the x and y axes.  This was slightly confusing because now Tiger had to figure out which axis was represented by the respective numbers.

For this exercise, I had Tiger draw out the X-axis and Y-axis, then he was to list the coordinates of the points that I put on the grid.

This was followed by applying our understanding of coordinates to drawing, first by linking various pre-set coordinates into straight lines and forming a shape on paper.

Next Tiger got to apply what he had learnt so far onto graph papers.  He was to identify various points on the graph paper based on a set of coordinates that I verbally read out to him.

These form the smaller shape on the paper.  Once the original, smaller shape was drawn, I gave him a multiple which he was to use to draw the bigger shape.

Here is another application of scaling up:

The next application was slightly more complicated than the ones before.  Here, Tiger had to:
1) plot the points on the paper;
2) reflect the figure on the y-axis;
3) learn that the equation for a straight line between two given points and which goes through the point (0,0) is y = -x.
4) apply his knowledge of rotational symmetry to plot the points of the final figure which was symmetrical to the original figure on the line y = -x.

Tiger played the following games to conclude his study of the coordinates:

1. Archery
2. Lost
3. Cops and Robbers

The lessons come from the following books:

This post is linked up to:
1) Look What We Did!
2) History and Geography Meme #69
5) Homeschool Mother's Journal: April 12, 2013
6) Hobbies and Handicrafts - April 12
7) Collage Friday - Part Time Unschoolers?
8) Homeschool Review
9) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with the 2:1 Conference 2013
10) Math Monday Blog Hop #95
11) Hip Homeschool Hop - 4/16/13

What is the real distance?

With the launch of our Marco Polo study, we are beginning to increase our focus on Geography-related activities.  One of the things Tiger learnt recently was to use a map scale.

I introduced the lesson by having him make a world map using cut-outs of the seven continents, labels for four oceans, and labels for the equator and the prime meridian.

Once he was happy with the relative positions of the labels and cut-outs, Tiger checked his layout with that printed in a children's atlas before gluing his pieces in place.

Here was his initial piece.  Did you spot the mistake?  I didn't either.

It was Tiger who, after a few minutes, remembered our trip to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich where he had stood on the prime meridian.

What does that mean?  That means that in his previous layout, Europe was placed too far away from the line that represented the prime meridan.  I was very glad that Tiger made the connection himself and spotted his own mistake before I did.

So, he removed the pieces carefully and re-did the right-hand side of his map:

The correct map

We then used the map above to discuss the practicalities of using a scale to represent the actual distance and size of locations on a map.

In order to understand the concept of map scale better, I asked Tiger to copy the scale found in a map onto an index card, then use that copied scale to measure the distance of a few places on the map, for example between Manchester and London.

We tried out a few different examples to make sure that Tiger has understood completely how to use and read a map scale.  All of the examples so far measured direct, straight-line distances.  Following that, I asked Tiger how he would measure the distance of a winding road or river on a map using the scale.  Tiger suggested twisting and turning his index card scale this way and that, but I suggested to him that perhaps there was an easier way.  When he failed to think of it after a few moments, I suggested using a piece of string.

We ended the lesson with a quick review.

Inspired by the book, Tiger drew a few maps of different scales -- from the location of our county to a floor plan of the house.

Country map

County map

Town map

Street map

Floor plan

It's great when the child extends the lessons himself!

Our application work came about by (1) Tiger taking measurements of his own feet before working out the actual measurements of the room first in feet, then converting the feet measurement into centimetres and metres.

(2) Scaling up a copy of a small drawing.  This is a very common scaling up method used by artists.

Once the scaled up drawing was completed, Tiger went over the outline with a black permanent marker before filling in watercolour.

The lessons above come from these books:

This post is linked up to:
1) Look What We Did!
2) Hearts for Home Blog Hop #9
3) History and Geography Meme #67
4) Virtual Refrigerator
5) Homeschool Mother's Journal: March 22, 2013
6) Hobbies and Handicrafts - March 22
7) Collage Friday - Poetry, Pastels and Purging
8) TGIF Linky Party #68
9) Homeschool Review
10) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with All the Birds
11) Math Monday Blog Hop #92
12) Hip Homeschool Hop - 3/26/13