Week 1 - Introduction and Resources Week 2 - Making a Paper Mache Map Week 3 - The Urge to Explore Week 4 - Preparing for the Journey Week 5 - Ships and Sea Monsters Week 6 - Navigation part 1 - How to make a Chip Log to calculate Speed Week 7 - Navigation…
Category: History – Renaissance
Elizabethan Unit Study: Week Two:
Biography We continued to read the next two chapters of Elizabeth I: The People's Queen: We learnt that Edward never actually got to rule England as a man, dying of Tuberculosis in 1553. Lady Jane Grey ruled after him for just nine days before Edward's half sister Mary became England's very first Queen Regnant, meaning…
Elizabethan Unit study: Week One: A Renaissance Queen
Biography This week I introduced them to the two main non fiction books we would be using over the next five weeks: The children read the whole of Good Queen Bess on Monday, independently, whilst I began reading Elizabeth I: The People's Queen. I am attempting two chapters each week to ensure we'll be finished…
Artist Study: Michelangelo
Resources we used http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOobsAtxsiM Biography of Michelangelo Having read the books and watched the two videos the children had a quick look at this website and then filled in a note page which I printed from Nadine's excellent collection at Practical Pages: The Works of Michelangelo When choosing which pieces to focus on I returned…
Renaissance: Tudor Explorers – Ships and Sea Monsters
Resources The children read the information which came with Homeschooling in the Woods. This included ship anatomy, sea faring sayings and their meanings, ship and sailor vocabulary as well as a sea chantey Blow the Man Down: I also gave them the following books I bought in a library sale: Ship Anatomy Using the ship…
Renaissance: Tudor Social Classes
This week we spent some time looking at the social classes of the Tudor times. First we read about it using the write up from Homeschooling in the Woods and then read the appropriate chapters from the following book: I asked the girls to dress up as a member of each of the six most…
Tudors and Stuarts: Explorers – Preparing for the journey
We spent this weeks session learning about preparing for a long and arduous journey of exploration. We read from the Great Atlas of Exploration and the information from Homeschool in the Woods about the life of an explorer. We learnt about provisions and made some of our own. Provisions for the journey We wrote a…
Renaissance: Tudors & Stuarts – Resources
This year we will be covering the time period between 1485 to 1714, otherwise known as the time when England was ruled by the Tudors and Stuarts. We are doing a separate study focusing on the explorers of this time, and over the summer we will be immersing ourselves in Shakespeare. For the next wee while…
Tudors & Stuarts: Explorers – Introduction and Resources
Hear ye, hear ye... I made a scroll to read out to the children during our first lesson, calling them to become Tudor Explorers extraordinaire. I was hoping to hook their enthusiasm early on in our study and I wasn't disappointed. A6 and I made the scroll by printing out the words in old English…
2014-2015 School Year: History – The Renaissance and Explorer’s Age
The one part of our school which everybody loves and yet I had forgotten to post on was our planned history studies for next year. I am very excited about our history plans. They are a rather wonderful concoction of curriculum, unit studies and project based learning, in fact it really is just a continuation…
Project Based Homeschooling: Mona Lisa Picture Study
Great Resources to Have on Hand Becoming Leonardo L decided to journal as she did her research and called her journal 'Becoming Leonardo'. Her goal was to really to try to get into his head and try to understand what it was that made him tick. This was her own idea and her own journal,…
Project Based Homeschooling: Gutenberg’s Printing Press
Great Resources to have on hand Making a Wooden Model of the Printing Press We had already done a bit of work on the printing press and Gary and T had put together the model of Da Vinci's design, which was very similar to Gutenberg's: Making your own rag paper http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XoTGFC-0NAÈ T ripped up…
Da Vinci and his Printing Press
We have been studying Gutenberg's printing press recently, first by familiarising ourselves with his printing press and then attempting to make our own. Whilst Leonardo wasn't the first to invent the printing press he did attempt to improve upon Gutenberg's own design. I had bought a Make-Your-Own kit for the Da Vinci press. I hadn't…
Inventor Study: Gutenberg and his Printing Press
First things first, we watched one of the brilliant videos found on YouTube about Gutenberg:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e2bA3tTYowHa! I just love these videos! Next we read these books all about Gutenberg and his printing press:The picture book was particularly good because it covers the history of printing. I was gratified to see we had covered the majority of…
Project Based Learning: Leonardo Da Vinci and His Ornithopter
Although the area of flight was a topic T12 would be covering extensively, I thought we'd do a very quick group activity, exploring Leonardo's fixation with flight and the resulting idea of an ornithopter. Da Vinci always claimed his earliest memory was of a Kite bird swooping down whilst he was in his cradle. It…