A new dynasty

When studying history in Britain, I have found it very difficult to set a clear-cut date for when a new era starts, especially in the so-called Middle Ages, post Norman conquest.  It says on the board above (shown in a museum) that the Middle Ages in Britain includes the Norman period, arguably because the Normans brought about a totally new way of life to Britain, and they brought the whole 'knights and castles' concept over.  However, for our own learning purpose, I am separating this period of 400+ years into the Normans (William I to King Stephen) and the Plantagenets (Henry II to Richard III).

Here we are, at the start of the Plantagenets. To get us into the mood of things, we have been listening to the medieval music from this CD:

Tiger has been referring to the new Kings and Queens pictorial wall chart very often.  As we move through the different periods of history, it is very useful for him to see at a glance the family connections of the British monarchy.

Before we got into Henry II, I wanted to make sure that Tiger has understood the family relationships amongst the different kings since William the Conqueror, as well as how and why the crown was passed onto Henry Plantagenet.  Tiger had some recollection (from our study of the Normans earlier this year) who the crown was passed onto after William I, but he could not tell me why Henry II received the crown and his relationship to his predecessor, King Stephen.  This was despite him having access to the wall chart.  Admittedly, the wall chart's layout is not entirely clear in this regard so I quickly scribbled the following onto the back of a piece of paper, to explain the matter to Tiger.  It worked.

Sometimes a quick scribble at the back of a piece of paper works better than bells and whistles!

Apparently, Tiger's confusion has much to do with the relationship between Stephen and Matilda -- I don't blame him, since women in those days seemed to be very fond of the name 'Matilda' and everyone back then seemed to have a wife or a sister called Matilda!

Once the clarification was made, we moved along with how we have always used Our Island Story in this household: narration.  Tiger listened to the CD and narrated to me all three chapters about Henry Plantagenet, and I wrote his narration down in our homemade timeline.  We started from Chapter 1 all through to King Stephen, so the timeline is rather long.  I used a different colour for each period.

Our Island Story timeline, made as an accordian fold.

A peak inside.

That's how long the timeline is so far (up to the Norman period) when opened up.

We then watched a short clip that summarises Henry II's life, before reinforcing our learning with yet another new material: a pack of Kings and Queens cards.  On one side of the cards is an image of the king or queen, on the other side is a short summary of his or her life in two to three paragraphs.

Then Tiger continued to work with the Usborne Sticker Dressing Knights book...

and read a few books on this period:

 

 

Probably the most relevant books that Tiger has read this time is the following, which tells him all about siege tactics...

because we had looked at different styles of castles in Europe...

before visiting Orford Castle,which was built by Henry II.  Orford Castle was involved in a number of sieges (as one would expect) so it was very relevant for Tiger to learn about the tactics that would have been used during those times.  The audio guide at the site was very helpful to provide a detailed explanation of the layout of the keep, as well as how each room would have been used.

 

When we came back home, I thought it would be a good idea to make a Norman/Medieval Roast Bird (I used chicken). It turned out quite alright:

However, that itself would not please the men in this household, so I added Yorkshire Puddings and steamed vegetables, which turned the meal into a traditional Sunday Roast.  It was well received, except that the strong vinegar taste was very noticeable.

A modern day Sunday Roast (with the Norman Roast Chicken in slices)

We are very lucky to be in a country where evidence of history is all around (if you bother to look) and with little effort, history lessons often come alive.  What is happening to history lessons in schools in this country is plainly appalling.


This post is linked up to several blog hops, where you can visit to see what other homeschoolers have been busy with.  It is also linked up to the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival: It's About Time edition.

Down the rabbit hole

This year I am determined to put things right about how science is learned here.  Last year it was done in a haphazard manner which has not been very effective in helping Tiger to become more knowledgeable in this area.  This year we are using MSNucleus, starting from the beginning -- kindergarten level.

We are starting with the Life Cycle (this curriculum's equivalent of Life Science).  So far so good.  We covered classification.

After reviewing the most fundamental classification of living versus non-living things and reading the book shown above, we proceeded to hands-on classification of wild animals using plastic model animals that Tiger used to play with.

It was interesting for me to observe how Tiger went about putting the animals into groups and to hear his logic behind the groupings.  Having Tiger explain how to arrive at his way of doing things is an effective way to understand how he thinks, and for me to assess how much he knows about a given topic or concept.

After spending a few moments discussing the factors that may be used to classify the animals, such as diet, size, habitat, physical attributes, I let Tiger loose to work on it himself while I observed how he went about it.

He first separated the whole lot into two big groups, then I challenged him to classify them into smaller groups after each separation.  His final result was as follows, which I then summarised into a diagramme so that we could both see what was done.

Everything was going great until the end of lesson 1 when Tiger and I discussed the native habitats of a selection of wild animals.  I was not expecting too much from our discussion since I am well aware of how little time we had spent on science before, but I became worried when Tiger did not know where elephants are from, and did not know that you don't find lions and tigers together in a jungle. Alarm bells started to go off in my head as I experienced a private "I-have-failed-my-child" moment.

Never mind this 6-year-old can tell me details of every major battle in the ancient world and in British History up to the War of the Roses -- who fought against who, how long the battle went on for, where the battle was fought, who won, why and how they won, what weapons were used by each side.... I still panicked, albeit momentarily, when I saw what resembled a "Do you know where milk comes from, children?  Yes, Miss, milk comes from the supermarket shelf" situation.  I'd say spending more time getting to know the various habitats/biomes is in order at this point.

After some scrambling around again, I discover that there is so much to learn about habitats/adaptation/biomes.  It seems that this topic alone is going to take us quite a while to study.  In the process of gathering materials and resources, I realise that this is turning into a unit study, or maybe calling it 'theme-based study' might be more appropriate.  My 'plan of attack' is loosely outlined as follows:

1) Hands-on Activities

• Janice VanCleave's Science Around the World, with results recorded in these notebooking pages.
  
• Instant Habitat Dioramas

2) References (books, websites, documentaries)

• Animal Atlas
• Planet Animal
• BBC Nature: Habitats
• Natural History Museum: Kids only (Life)
• Planet Earth

3) Games
3D World Animals Floor Puzzle (this is a 'leftover' from Tiger's preschool days that we are now using as a springboard for discussion)

4) Field Trips

• A zoo
• Natural History Museum 

I don't know how long we will spend on this topic before we resume lesson 2 in our science curriculum, but I am inclined to enjoy learning as much as we can about this topic and see where else our interest (or in this case, a knowledge gap) takes us, rather than to worry about ticking the boxes of an arbitrary sequence set by someone else.  We are doing it our way, and I'm really excited about it.

This is probably our first deviation from our very structured, "Classical" style.  Does that matter?  I don't think so.  I am not even sure what grade level we are working at for this, but knowing grade levels and following strictly to any specific homeschooling style are not important anymore; it's what we have actually learnt that counts.


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

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.

Autumn Watch

On our nature walk last week, we spotted early signs of autumn everywhere.  We did not set out to do any specific studies, but there was certainly no way to miss seeing all the beautiful colours of ripening fruit and deciduous leaves.

 

 

 

While nearly all the fields we walked by that day were already harvested (Mr. Farmer has been busy too), we came across one that was still uncut.  Looking at the crop shining in the afternoon light, I was reminded of the song, Fields of Gold, by Sting.  I don't usually recommend pop videos, but I respect Sting as a real musician.  If you know how to take apart the songs he wrote and analyse their structures, you'll know what I mean:

We walked for a few hours that day, taking in all the sights, smells and sounds.  We knew it was time to go home when we saw the migrating birds.

Seeing Mr. Farmer preparing his fields for planting next year's crops also reminded that we have our own work for the new (academic) year to get on with.

Our walk that day was an impromptu so I did not prepare any specific activities to go along with it, but these autumn spotting sheets are useful to anyone (especially if you are in the UK) who wants to have a slightly more directed, educational experience on their nature walks.

Has autumn arrived at where you are?