a great and ancient city where thousands lived within sturdy rock walls…

where they ate and drank …

and worshiped in the old ways…

and embraced the new…

for a while…

until old clashed with new…

as is so often the way of things…

and even the thickest, sturdiest walls…

fell to the forces of wind and rain and violence and time…

until the great city was no more…

and only the walls were left to tell.

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Well, the plans are beginning to become a reality and JBug completed her first poster today! I LOVE what my funny, creative girl came up with!

All of the posters will include a date at the top (except this one, of course), an illustration, and a few lines of copywork.  (I used a template from the basic notebooking set from Notebookingpages.com and printed it up on cardstock).  I assign the copywork, but it’s up to JBug and her vivid imagination to come up with a picture. She LOVES that part!

I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next!

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Anyway, today I share my plans for Superboy’s history studies for this coming year. He chose to study Greek and Roman history (excellent choice I must say), and I have spent many a long hour sifting and sorting through ginormous piles of history narratives. I really dug deep, reading and reading anything I could get my hands on (and some that I couldn’t), trying to find just the right thing.

(btw: an excellent source for viewing the full text of MANY older history texts is this one:Heritage History. Truly a treasure trove! Dig in!)

My requirements: The chosen book should be narrative in nature (story-like and readable), living, thought-provoking, and at the right reading level to challenge without defeating.  Not so much to ask, is it?

Apparently it is, because I never did find that *just right* thing. Everything was either too dry, too easy, too thick and tedious, or just plain boring.

I did come close, however, and have decided upon a few books as his anchor texts:

For the Greeks, he will read a combination of the sophisticated (but excellent) The Greek Way, by Edith Hamilton, and the easier reading Famous Men of Greece by Haaren and Poland (Memoria Press Edition).

Both of these books score high for narrative quality. The problem lies in reading level. Famous Men is a bit on the low side (too easy), and The Greek Way tips the scales on the higher side and will challenge Superboy’s reading skills mightily. But I find what Ms. Hamilton has to say about the Greeks to be beautiful and highly thought-provoking, and so I chose it for him even if I need to help him through a bit of it. It’ll definitely be worth the effort.

For the Romans, his anchor texts will be Famous Men of Rome (again, a bit on the easy side) and Historical Tales Vol 11: Roman by Charles Morris, which seems to actually be spot on as far as the level of difficulty I am looking for.(read it here for free) Plus, it’s such a good read!

Here is an excerpt of Historical Tales so you’ll see what I mean:

While Tarquin the Proud was king a strange thing happened at Rome. One day an unknown woman came to the king, bearing in her arms nine books, which she offered to sell to him at a certain price. She told him that they contained the prophecies of the Sibyl of Cumæ, and that from them might be learned the destiny of Rome and the way to carry out this destiny.

But the price she asked for her books seemed to the king exorbitant, and he refused to buy them, whereupon the woman went away from the palace and burned three of the volumes. She then returned with six only and offered them to the king, but demanded the same price for the six as she had before done for the nine. King Tarquin heard this demand with laughter and mockery, and again refused to buy. The woman once more left the palace, and burned three more of the books.

To the king’s astonishment his strange visitor soon returned, bearing the three books that remained. On being asked their price, she named the same sum as she had demanded for the six and the nine. This was ceasing to be matter for mockery. There might be some important mystery concealed behind this strange demand. The king sent for the augurs of the court, told them what had happened, and asked what he should do. They told him that he had done very wrong. In refusing the books he had refused a gift of the gods. By all means he must buy the books that were left. He bought them, therefore, at the Sibyl’s price. As for the woman, she was never seen again…

Makes you want to read on, right? That’s what I’m looking for! (and unfortunately I am still looking for an actual paper copy of this book. I hate reading online!) ETA: thanks to helpful comment by Brittney, I was able to have the book printed up by the Harvard book store  Book Machine ! Neat! Thanks Brittney!

Ah, but that most certainly isn’t all of it. The boy is going to be steeped in the classical world. For literature this year will be largely (but not entirely) tied into his history studies. There’s a wide variety here. Some selections are easier, some are much more challenging.

Here is his literature list:

• Hittite Warrior-Joanne Williamson
• Epic of Gilgamesh
• Black Ships Before Troy-Rosemary Sutcliff
• The Odyssey-Homer
• The Glorious Adventure-Richard Halliburton
• Socrates’ death speech
• A  Young Macedonian-Church
• Orestian trilogy-Aeschylus
• Oedipus Rex-Sophocles
• The Trojan Women-Euripides
• Julius Caesar-Shakespeare
• The Living Wood: St Helena and the Emperor Constantine-Lewis DeWohl
• The Restless Flame: A novel about St Augustine-DeWohl
• Kon Tiki-Thor Heyerdahl (just for fun!)

And he will also go on a little jaunt through some CS Lewis. He has long ago read the Narnia books, so we move on to:

• Till we Have Faces
• Out of the Silent Planet
• Perelandra
• That Hideous Strength
• Screwtape Letters

And where/if we have time (particularly later in the year, the Roman selections are pretty sparse) we will add in a few other things I have in mind for him (perhaps some of Augustine’s Confessions?)

Lots of excellent reading! And in true Charlotte Mason style, all of his reading will be narrated orally, with weekly written narrations as well.

By way of keeping track of the flow of history, he will record his independent research in various reference books using the high school-level History Scholar notebooking pages from History Scribe, which includes such interesting topics as Greek and Roman architecture, Greek theater, the Peloponnesian Wars, the Fall of Rome, and many more-enough for a topic a week.

So, in summary, assigned reading will include his 4 anchor texts and his literature selections, all to be narrated orally, and his independent research to be recorded in his notebooking pages, plus narrated orally and in weekly essay form.  I think that should do it!

And now, like the classical world, this post is history!

Oh yes, I crack myself up…

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But, every time I talk history with JBug she says something that tells me that she needs a ” big picture” year first.

She really has no concept of the chronological order of things: whether the Pharaohs came before or after “the Presidents” (as she calls the founding fathers) , when and where knights jousted in tournaments, or if Ninjas and Samurai still roam the streets of Japan.

Really, it is all just a jumbled mess in her mind and I need to help her sort it out in a logical way. So, before I dive deeply into a specific era with her, I’ve decided we will spend a year doing an overview of world history, giving her some  mental “pegs” on which to hang her understanding of history.

Our main “text” will be the audiobook version of this:

Little History of the World: Classic Collection

I’ve read a lot of children’s history spines and I find this one to be the most story-like and captivating (aka “living” ) of them all. Unlike some other popular history spines, the quality of Gombrich’s writing is excellent and worthy of imitation. Plus, the way the audio version is read is totally charming and I know JBug will be enthralled.

I plan to let her listen to (and then orally narrate) one chapter per week. Next day she will work on a mini-poster (on 8.5 X 11 cardstock) with an illustration and a sentence or two summary (copywork). These posters will then be hung on a line, high on the wall, time-line style, so she can have a clear visual reminder of the order of things. Then as we read supplemental materials, we can discuss whether they came before or ofter the events on these poster “pegs”.

As far as supplemental materials, well, there are tons of great living history picture books out there and lots of compiled lists of them, so I won’t bother you with a list of my own.  (Here is a good list if you are interested). I have tons of them in our home library already, and plan on pulling and making use of them to coordinate with and supplement our audiobook spine.

I’ve also recently acquired some new gems to help us along our way:

Life Story by Virginia Lee Burton. This is an oldie but goodie and should start us off right with an idea of the scale of geologic time vs historical time.
Usborne Time Traveler: a neat book that has you imagine traveling back in time to visit several historical cultures. Since it actually goes backward in time, we will have to read it in sections from back to front to coordinate it with our forward-moving spine. Should not be an issue.
Tales From Far and Near / Tales of Long Ago: History Stories of Other Lands [2 books in 1] these are ultra-short little historical tales which JBug should be able to read herself with a little help from mom. We will use them mostly to build reading confidence, rather than for gaining historical information as they are really pretty light on the details.

And as a reference, to answer all of those inevitable questions I know she will ask,  I have some meaty history encyclopedias we can draw from, but this one is more JBug’s speed:

The Usborne Book of World History

As far as scheduling goes, the plan is for history 3-4days per week, as follows:

• Day 1 will be listening to the audio followed by an oral narration.
• Day 2 will be making the poster and copywork.
• Day 3  will be for the additional related read-alouds (followed by oral narrations).
• Day 4 will be for JBug to read a related story to me (either from Tales from Far and Near or other easy-reader type books).

So, that is the plan for untangling history.

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It isn’t that our “approach” to education is terribly unique. Lots of people are relaxed, eclectic, hands-on, unschoolish, whatever, home learners. I see it more and more every day, people loosening up, handing the educational reins over a bit more to their kids. Tweaking things until they fit just right. So, nothing groundbreaking happening here in the educational theory department by a long shot. We did not invent the idea of following a child’s interests, of tailoring teaching methods to a child’s learning styles, of learning through living life and following passions.

What I DO feel is unique about our homeschool is  how all that plays out here in real life. Where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.

Because we, each of us here at Lapaz, bring to the table our own unique set of talents and challenges, interests and abilities, our homeschool is out of necessity going to look very different from any other. We are a unique combination, the bunch of us, in a unique set of  circumstances, the combination of which is not to be duplicated anywhere else on earth. And so our homeschool, being a mad blend of all that, is one unique concoction.

(“Thank heavens!” some might say, and I’d be apt to agree, LOL!)

But anyway, my point in all of this is that our unique situation means that we make choices of materials that may or may not resonate with other homeschooling families.

Case in point: Here is what Superboy just finished reading.

The Mutt: How to Skateboard and Not Kill Yourself

It is the autobiography of Rodney Mullen- an excellent book, well written, and very readable. Superboy blazed through it in a day and one long, late night.

In our school, I “count” it as history.

And why not? Isn’t history the story of people and events that influence the future?  Well, Rodney Mullen is profoundly influential in the lives of many, many people worldwide, young and old. He has a great life story of overcoming some profound obstacles to achieve his dreams. He was innovative, passionate, and driven and earned his place as an all-time great in his sport. I mean, he pretty much invented the ollie, for goodness sake! I consider that historic.

But what is more important, is that Superboy considers it historic. It is history that is relevant to him, right now.

And by respecting his choice of historical reading I am telling him that the study of history doesn’t have to be the way I learned it- an endless parade of  empires and battles, rises and falls, dates and places strange and distant, as dry and dusty as books hidden away on a library back shelf. Instead, I am telling him history can be living and breathing, close to home, and as relevant as his very own skateboard.

Because of this book we had some great conversations.

One was about Y2K  and the apocalypse that wasn’t (imagine, that craziness is history now!) because in the book Rodney Mullen shares how it haunted his thoughts for a time. I shared how that big hullabaloo was handled in our household(totally ignored) and by folks I knew (stocking up on survival foods).

Another conversation was about the age-old parental dilemma of encouraging talents in our children (like a young Rodney Mullen or Shawn White, Leonardo DaVinci or Joshua Bell) vs preparing them for reality (we can’t all be Rodney Mullen or Shawn White, Leonardo DaVinci or Joshua Bell, right? Some of us have to get real jobs…) How does a parent know which way to go?

History can be pretty personal. I want him to see that. To understand that history is about real people and the choices they make.

And armed with this much more intimate view of history,I think there is a much greater chance he will continue to want to learn history, to enjoy it and not close his mind to it, or write it off as irrelevant the way I did at his age. Hopefully the Romans and Greeks, the Medicis and the Minuit-men, all of those iconic historical figures will also become his companions, in time.

And with that in mind, I’d love to open the comments to suggestions for history books that you love, the ones  that make history alive for you.

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To be honest, we don’t usually do anything special for Veterans day. Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate veterans and soldiers and the enormous sacrifices they have made and continue to make to this day. But other than just talk about Veteran’s day and what it means, we’ve never really done much. I think it is just due to lack of inspiration on my part and the unfortunate proximity to other major holidays which, right or wrong, command more of our attention.

This year I intend to do better.

We will begin by doing a little study of the history of Veterans Day using info from here. That document contains great historical info, plus a description of the Veteran’s Affairs Seal, which we will draw and color. The littles will paste pre-cut stars and stripes to make American flags, and then Superboy will demonstrate proper flag folding technique (also in the above-linked document) to the little ones. They will practice by folding paper flags. They may also do some coloring pages from here. And there is tons of stuff here that we could choose from.

I may adapt some of the ideas from Michaela’s fantastic Memorial Day Lapbook as well.

Because Superboy’s current interests lie in the Civil War, we will be watching together the movie Gettysburg (during the littles’ naptime) and reading the Gettysburg Address.

We will look at and discuss data from all of the US wars (see also here)

We will also be discussing the Iraq War and looking at that data.

(Note that the official name of this war, according to the Department of Defense is the “Global War on Terror” and includes operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. We will certainly be discussing the appropriateness of this name in regards to each of those areas.)

We will continue by learning about Martinmas, the Feast of St Martin of Tours, patron saint of soldiers, baking horseshoe cookies, and making paper-decorated glass lanterns.

And if we get only a small percentage of that actually done, I will be thrilled!

© lapazfarm for LaPaz Home Learning, 2007. | Permalink | 2 comments

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So I thought, what really is the main attraction to this area of science? Why does every kid go through a stage of wanting to be a paleontologist? Well, of course there are many reasons, but the short answer is… the fossils.

Fossils are just cool, there’s no denying. What kid does not dream of taking a shovel and pick, heading out into the desert to unearth something ancient and mysterious? Heck, I still think it would be awesome!

Unfortunately we don’t live in an area that has fossils to be readily found, or that would be my first choice of activities. And travel is not really an option right now, or we would head west.

So, I had the idea that we would do the next best thing and make our own fossils! The kids leapt at the opportunity!

First we got out a bunch of books and perused the pages to become familiar with different types of fossils. Then Superboy made a list of the different fossils they would like to make and the supplies they would need. Then it was time to begin! Bring on the Sculpey!

I really love how they worked together on this project, with JBug asking questions and Superboy sharing what he had read. They each used the pictures in the books to create their fossils and worked very hard, taking care to make them look accurate, and adding much detail.

Once they were satisfied with the clay models, we put them in the oven to bake:

Then came the amazing part, painting them to make them look like the real thing. I think they ended up with some pretty great results! Here is the finished collection:

Here are some close ups:

Superboy’s “ammonite” (it looks so real to me!).

His “Crinoid” ( this took a long time to make!).

JBug’s “trilobite” (not bad for a 6yo!).

Superboy collected some leaves from a ginkgo tree at the park to make this one.

And JBug did the fern.

It was fun experimenting with different materials to see what kind of impression they made in the clay. We finally settled on some seashells to make the majority of this “fossil fish“, which was a combined effort of Superboy and me. I couldn’t help myself as the kids were having so much fun I had to get in on it, too!

And in the collection picture you can there there is also a “raptor claw,” a “mollusk” and a representative of the Ediacaran fauna, all of which turned out wonderfully well.

Oh, what fun!!!!And relatively simple, too.

The next step is for Superboy to make cards for them all describing each fossil, where it would have lived and when, and interesting info about them. And then we will have our own little fossil museum to enjoy!

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One of the things we love about Alaska is the wonderful cultural diversity of its people. Here in Kodiak, one afternoon’s activities brought us face to face with several cultures that are very new and fascinating to us.

First stop today was a shop filled with wonderful Japanese imports.

I drooled over the beautiful sushi and tea sets, Superboy marveled at the gorgeous engraved samurai swords, and Jbug delighted in the many lovely jade Buddas. I was keeping an eye out for small, inexpensive items to purchase for our continent boxes and I think I have a few ideas. I will likely go back tomorrow and make some surprise purchases.

Next stop: we wandered into a Thai grocery. What a fascinating place! Just walking down the aisles and looking at the food items is an education in cultural diversity! The woman in the shop noticed us “ooh”-ing and “ah”-ing over everything and came to talk with us about the different foods we saw, many of which were (quite logically) seafood related. Many varieties of seaweed, squid, shrimp, exotic fruits and root products…just marvelous! We were in an adventurous mood and up for trying something new, so the kind shopkeeper helped us to pick out a few items to try. Superboy chose a bag of tiny dried shrimp in the shell, JBug chose a jar of coconut gel cubes in syrup, and I picked out a can of jack fruit, sugar palm, and some dried pickled mango.

The shopkeeper advised that the dried shrimp were often used for adding flavor to scrambled eggs and that some roasted, mashed eggplant would add nutrition to the dish as well, so we picked up a lovely little purple eggplant to go! She also advised that the coconut gel cubes and the fruit were excellent in milkshakes, so we popped over to the grocer for some vanilla ice cream and an extra gallon of milk! Tonight’s dinner should be an adventure in eating!

Our next stop: The Alutiiq museum.

This lovely museum houses artifacts and cultural items of the native Alutiiq people of the Kodiak Archipelago. We learned that this culture has existed here on these islands for well over 7 thousand years! Wow! Since they have no written history, we know very little about them and so archaeological evidence is very important, along with their rich oral history. Sadly, this culture, like so many indigenous cultures is slowly fading from existence as the elders die and their knowledge is not passed on to the next generation. Luckily, there are a few who are working hard to see that it does not die out altogether. JBug was very inspired by their short documentary on the Horseshoe Cove Archaeological site and is excited to learn more about archeology. “When we find these things, we have to take care of them, and learn from them, Mommy!”   Well said, JBug!

Though not quite so ancient as the Alutiiq culture, Kodiak also has a long history of Russian settlement. Alexander Baranov established a trading post at St. Paul Harbor in 1792. Kodiak became the first capital of Russian America and was a major fur trading center for many years. Around town are many reminders of this Russian heritage. Among them is our last stop, the Holy Resurrection Russian Orthodox church. It was founded in 1793.

Don’t let the humble exterior fool you! This place is gorgeous!

We had never been inside a Russian Orthodox Church before, so we were not sure what to expect, but this place was just amazing!

The icons all around the wall were so beautiful!

(sorry my photos do not do them justice)

Candles were everywhere, and there was the impressivly decorated reliquary housing the relics of St Herman himself!

(front view with carvings)

(top view)

Here are just a few of the many fascinating icons, some with relics attached.

St Herman of Alaska

St Innocent, Apostle to Alaska:

St Peter the Aleut:

And this absolutely glorious icon made of silver:

It was all so jaw-droppingly beautiful!

All in all we had quite the world-wide experience, all with a simple walk around town!

Having seen so much today, we decided to leave the rest of our world travels for tomorrow, when we visit the Mexican import store, the Baranov Museum of Russian culture (to view their amazing collection of matreshka dolls), and the US Coast Guard base!

And for now: Camiku Tang’rciqamken! (Alutiiq for “see you later”)

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Superboy is continuing with his mini-unit on Japan. Today’s topic: Kanji

You’ll never guess which one he chose to learn first. Wait…maybe you will!

“Karate” of course!

But it is a lot harder than it looks to get them looking right. After much practice he finally decided he had it down well enough to copy it into his Japan mini-book. The book should be done this week and I will put pics up then. It is so cute!

Tomorrow’s topic: Sumo!

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Here is the answer to yesterday’s puzzler: What is that boy up to now?

His assignment was to research methods and then build a miniature wattle and daub cabin.

And this is called “wattle” because….?

Note the intense concentration as indicated by the tongue sticking out!LOL! The texture, according to research, has to be just right.

Who said all that bread dough kneading wouldn’t come in handy?

Superboy has never been one to be  afraid to get his hands dirty! But does he have to enjoy it quite so much?

I said “hands” dirty! Oh, well, slather on that “daub” and wait for it to dry. Then please go take a shower, dear boy we are going out for seafood tonight!
That’s all for now. Superboy is gone camping this weekend.  More construction updates next week! Thanks to Kris Bordessa for the idea, from her Colonial Projects book (see sidebar for link).

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