The Bayeux Tapestry

Nifty online resources for studying the Bayeux Tapestry (Lesson 55 in Mystery of History II)

An animated version of part of the Bayeux Tapestry:
 Activities to go along with your study.

And this is a little trickier to find, but there is a Stuff You Missed in History Class podcast about the Bayeux Tapestry. You probably have to go into iTunes, to their podcasts and search for it. Searching for Bayeux Tapestry in the iTunes Store may likely bring it up. The podcast is free.

Mystery of History, Volume 2, Weeks 1 & 2, (Which Actually Took Us 3 Weeks)

We are excitedly jumping into our next phase of history, one I've never even been in: the Early Church and Medieval times.

Somehow, we've skipped over this time period.  Rose Bud was working through ancient history when she went off to public school.  Daisy was small and was lightly going through a little ancient history with us.  When Rose Bud was very small, we went through Sonlight's Core 1 and only half-heartedly through Core 2, which contained the medieval period.  Somehow it was much more fun to reach American history and we took our sweet time enjoying Cores 3 and 4.  Somewhere in there Rose Bud and I (with Daisy tagging along) also did Core 5.

When Rose Bud went to public school, Daisy and Pepper and I tackled Cores 3 and 4 again, enjoying American history all over.  I then debated and agonized over doing Core 5.  So many wise ones who had gone before discouraged its use by a 4th grader, which Pepper was.  So after investing in it and deciding to use it, at the 11th hour I bailed and we went for Core 6, Ancient History.

Well, it wasn't many days after that decision that I decided Mystery of History, which, being a Curriculum Junkie, I already owned was a better fit.  And we never looked back.

And now we are beginning MOH2.

So without further ado, here are our first two weeks:
Mystery of History 2

Pentecost and the First Followers of Jesus c. A.D. 29 
Saul, Who is Also Called Paul A.D. 31
Paul's Missionary Journeys c. A.D. 46-66
Nero A.D. 37-68
Martyrs of the Early Church c. A.D. 64-257








Read-Alouds (books I read to them)
Stephen, A Soldier of the Cross  This book was written in 1896 and republished by Lamplighter Books.  Although it is written in archaic language (lots of thees and thous and doest thou) the girls (and I) loved it!  It was a great story with an exciting plot intertwining actual characters from the Bible with some fictional go-alongs in a story of how-it-might-have-been.  It gave a good overview of what everyday life was like for various levels of society in the deserts of Egypt and in Jerusalem just after Jesus' death.
The Ides of April This very exciting story takes place in A.D. 62 during the time of Nero.  It's not related to the Christians of the time, but rather tells the life of a Roman household and its slaves.  One slave, having been accused of the murder of his master, has endangered all the slaves of the household.  Another slave who has escaped capture endeavors to save them all.  I began reading this aloud and then passed it off to the girls to finish. (I can only read so much before my voice gives out!)
The Life of St. Paul by Fosdick  This is a Landmark book and thus very easy to read.  I could assign it as a reader, however this article highlights some concerns about the author, Harry Emerson Fosdick.  These concerns didn't keep us from reading the book.  Instead, I chose to do it as a read-aloud so that we could discuss concerns as they came up.  The book does point out some interesting  ideas about Paul's life which I hadn't realized before.  For example, he points out how Jesus was a country boy, growing up in a rural area and being familiar with rural ideas and farming practices.  Along with that, the people he preached to were also mainly rural people and this is evident in the illustrations he uses; illustrations about sheep, crops, birds of the field, vineyards.  Paul, on the other hand, was a city boy from Tarsus, a booming metropolis.  He was well-educated, knew several languages and was a Roman citizen.  Hence his illustrations were of things like running the race (a reference to Roman athletics) and such.  He seldom mentioned anything related to farming or livestock.  In any case, we did notice that there is no mention of Jesus' divinity or the Holy Spirit in the book.  Also, in the later chapters, Paul is painted as being concerned about losing the respect and love of the churches, whereas the Biblical Paul would have been concerned with the churches losing love and respect for GOD (not himself).  We discussed this discrepancy and pointed out how one needs to be aware of the perspective and world-view of the author whatever one is reading.
(Incidently, here is a list of Landmark books listed chronologically)


On-going Read-Alouds
We are reading  each day from the One-Year Chronological Bible (NLT).  This is the Bible that got me to finally read through the whole Bible.  And I love the readability of the NLT.  Whichever version you choose, this is organized chronologically, so we've had Galatians inserted into our Acts of the Apostles already.  Readings are short, 15 min. a day.  We began with Acts.

Trial and Triumph  I have probably too many books about Early Church history, but I am finding, as we read through them, that they each bring something different to our experience.  Thus far we have only read about Polycarp and Blandina in this book, but both came to us in nice, short, story-format chapters.  Sometimes it's nice just to have something easy to read.


In that same vein, we are reading from Foxe: Voice of the Martyrs.  This version is published by Voice of the Martyrs organization.  This book tells the stories of the apostles, as well as early martyrs.  It has an old-fashioned feel with very old drawings (gory!) throughout.

AND we are reading from Peril and Peace, Volume 1: Chronicles of the Ancient Church.  Again, this is more of a story format.  However, rather than JUST stories of the martyrs, it also gives the history of the ancient church, such as background of the martyring Roman emperors and what worship in the early church looked like.

Readers

Pepper somehow escaped reading The Bronze Bow, although Daisy had finished it last spring, so Pepper has read that already this fall.  Pepper also read The Beast of Lor by Clyde Robert Bulla, about the Romans in early Britain.  Daisy read Titus: Comrade of the Cross, which is a prequel to Stephen listed above.  It was too challenging for Pepper, but Daisy enjoyed it, in spite of its 32 chapters and the 5 days I gave her to read it!  Both girls also paged through The Roman Colosseum by Elizabeth Mann when we read about Nero.

Other Media

"Prisoner for Christ,"  from Adventures in Odyssey Bible Eyewitness  (CD#3) told the story of Onesimus, the slave of Philemon (of Philemon in the Bible).  Twice Freed also tells the story, but the girls deemed the book, "boring."

They've been working through the Drive Thru History series and watched episodes from Greece and the Word DVD which touched on the travels of Paul.

And we love the Diana Waring CDs!  This year we are listening to the Romans, Reformers and Revolutionaries set.  For these two weeks, we are listening to Digging Deeper, Disc 1: The Exploding Church and What in the World's Going On Here? Disc 1, Track 2: 1st century Church & Emperors.

Maps and Timeline

We are combing the map exercises in MOH2 with our MapTrek maps.  And we use the Homeschool in the Woods timeline figures on our timeline.  We add the figures suggested in MOH and any others that we've read about for the week.

Olympic/Canada Projects

Pepper made a TV to display what she learned about Canada and the Winter Olympics. We used a kleenex box (well, ok, Target brand facial tissue, if you want to avoid trademark infringement) and I made "screens" on half-sheets of paper. She drew or wrote her information in each screen and then we taped them all end-to-end and rolled them up on dowels. You turn the dowels to advance the screens. It turned out very cute!

Pepper proudly shows off her TV

 

The Canadian flag

Ancient Greek Government (the line of guys in the bottom left corner are standing in line to vote in their democracy!)

 

Ever wanted to see inside a TV?

The ends of the screen-strip are taped to the dowels.  We poked a small hole, just big enough for the dowels in the top of the box.  The bottom end of each dowel sits inside a large paper clip taped to the inside bottom of the box.  This keeps the dowels straight and in place and keeps the screen roll near the front of the box.

Here is Banana Boy's not-quite-finished lapbook:

"Canada and the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games"

Canada/British Columbia section

Olympic section (a little sparse)

Individual sports.  BB wrote a little about each sport inside the little books.

Daisy made a similar lapbook, but of course put much more time and effort into it.

 

Ancient Olympics section.  Booklets are a combination of the two lapbook kits mentioned here.

  

Modern Olympics section.  It includes a calendar of the dates of the 2010 Olympics, a map of the torch relay, a tri-fold brochure of British Columbia, a booklet about the torch, the Canadian flag, a chart showing distances from our area to former Olympic host cities, a booklet about the opening ceremonies, an Olympic acrostic poem, a medal count, map of participating countries and a report on an outstanding Canadian.  Inside shots of some of the booklets are below.

  

 

Medal-winning countries in selected events

Olympics and Canada

Part of Sonlight Core 4 includes a study of Canada.  I think it is scheduled near the end of the year, but when I began to plan for studying the Olympics, I had an aha! moment and pulled out the Canada book to tie in.

So we've been making lapbooks.  We've learned about Canada using Sonlight's book A Unit About Canada.

This has been a very nice study.  We were fairly choosey about which pages we did.  I copied off many of the pages with fill-in-the-blank answers and after we'd read about the topic, I had either Daisy or Pepper do the writing while everyone chimed in with the answers.  I didn't feel it was necessary, nor productive, to have each one complete their own sheet.  Between the reading, the discussion and the worksheet, I think they all got a good grounding in the topics.  I also had whomever hadn't filled out the sheet check it over for accuracy.

This book was also nice in that I was able to find activities within suitable for Daisy, Pepper AND Banana Boy.  He enjoyed the maps.  We also did some extensions with him about tides when we read about the world's highest tides in the Bay of Fundy.  He chose to read about Michael J. Fox when they each chose an "Outstanding Canadian" to report on.  Why would he know MJF?  Mr. GT and the kids are movie addicts on the weekends when I am at work, and they've seen all the Back to the Future movies!

After a general overview of Canada, we focused in on British Columbia because that's where the 2010 Winter Olympics are, in Vancouver.  There's a page in the book with 6 different province-study topics and each of them took two.  We checked out a bunch of books from the library on BC and the kids set to work investigating.  Daisy and Pepper were able to find answers to their questions and record notes pretty well on their own.  BB and I worked together to explore natural resources, crops and manufacturing and food, sports and attractions.  He made a little book about logging with coloring pages I found on the internet and colored a picture of salmon for his lapbook.  I think I'll have him do a hockey page, too.

Finally, for the Olympics study, I bought two lapbooks from CurrClick.  CurrClick is a wonderful place to buy e-books and instant download lapbooking sets.  They have a nice selection of freebies and often have sales, plus they carry products from many different companies.  If you get on their weekly newsletter mailing list, you get a new freebie each week and it's a good way to sample each company's product.  I've definitely found I don't like all lapbooking kits. Some companies are much more to my taste than others.

We used A Journey Through Learning's 2010 Winter Olympics lapbook and Live N Learn's Winter Olympics lapbook.  AJTL's lapbook was a nice fit for Banana Boy, with much simpler, broader activities.  LnL's kit contained very specific and deep projects exploring the olympics and was a good match for Daisy's skills.  Pepper worked a bit from both and I selected just the projects and booklets we needed and tossed the rest.

If you are considering purchasing either, the Live N Learn kit is not year-specific and could be used as-is over again for another Winter Olympics.  The Journey Through Learning set is specific to the 2010 Olympics, but only in a few places (mascots, themes, map of the torch trek).  Much of it could be used again another time and it's on sale right now for only $3.75!  It would be a great value to purchase now and use again next time.  You could adapt the year-specific activities to the new olympics fairly easily with a little internet research.

A few other online things I collected from www.activityvillage.co.uk

An Olympic acrostic and a Distance to Travel worksheet

I'll post pictures of the lapbooks when we have them finished--hopefully that will be by tomorrow, since Grandma and Grandpa are coming!