The Angelicscalliwag Homeschool: Culture, Events, People, Dress up and Geography

This week I am doing a quick series on how I home school.

For Part One: Introduction

For Part Two: Why History?

For each time period/country we learn about, I have many topics or areas that I seek to cover.  I am not pedantic about this.  If there is no obvious natural way to cover them that is fine, but the list gives me a place from which to begin planning.  I will be going through each topic over the next few days to show what it is I do with each one.

Major Events and Players

First, I look at any major events that have happened during the time period we are studying.  This is good for their general knowledge and, just the fact that they are major events will inevitably make them interesting.  This gives me a good starting point but is not the full story.  I then look at the players, the people who were the ones making the history.  These are infinitely more interesting than the events because we can all, as current history makers, relate to people who in essence have not changed much in the last 3000 or so years.  Humans have always strived to push the boundaries of their existence, to discover more, explain more and ultimately achieve more.  It is a drive intrinsically present in us all, and as such is fascinating.

Having jotted down a few ideas I check the book lists from places such as Sonlight and other history strong curriculums.  This is helpful for choosing historical fiction for the children to read.  I then order what I can second-hand from Amazon.  Often Amazon bring up alternative books which I will often check out reviews to see if they might be suitable for the children.  Finally I look for biographical accounts of the people I would like the children to focus on, always choosing primary evidence based autobiographical writings if I can.  For example we read Marco Polo’s own writings about his travels and also read the words Confucius himself wrote rather than those written by others.

From here I think up lots of hands on activities to do with the children.  In the main I choose activities which replicate the essence of the culture in some way.  Like mummifying a whole chicken whilst in Ancient Egypt:

The final mummified chicken in it's coffin. Note the canopic jar next to it

Traditional paper making whilst studying ancient china:

Our hairy paper took the ink with no real problems, although I'm certain it could not have been painted on, the paper would have fallen to bits

And a Mayan Dig whilst in Ancient Americas:

We even did a mystery type activity when we revisited Ancient Egypt last summer, learning about Howard Carter.  The children did another archeological dig and through their discoveries had to surmise whether the Egyptians and Assyrians ever lived side by side.

I try to mix up and vary their activities so that with each study they are learning different skills.  It’s a fabulous way to learn, which they hopefully will never forget.

Leadership Studies

Some of the individuals we always look into are the leaders of the countries we are studying.  A couple of years a go the children carried out leadership studies of Hammurabi.  They wrote an editorial about one of his rules:

C's letterMade their own steles:

DSC_0470

And then completed the quest to dress up as Hammurabi using only black bags as their dress up:

T

I show you all this so that you can see how simple it is to make a heavy subject fun and easy.  The children were about 8 here and traditionally would be thought too young for such studies.  Not so if you include black boxes, tip ex and black bags.  Oh, the fun that can be had!

Currently they are comparing the leadership skills of Richard I to those of Saladin.  I’m sure we’ll do different activities to make it a little hands on also.  Leadership skills are important to me because by studying the strengths and weaknesses of leaders gone by the children can learn what characteristics are needed for good leadership, and hopefully apply them to their own life.  This is particularly important for Thomas who will be leading his own family one day.

Dressing Up and Re-enactment

It is usually my choice of events and people which dictates the dressing up or re-enactment props I buy or make.  During the Middle Ages last year we concentrated on the Normans who were renowned for their Knights, so sure enough we bought knights dress up, learning about heraldry as we made our own shields:

I'm not entirely certain tnat noble knights should look so tribal!!

When we learnt about Robin hood they all dressed up and we learned archery:

Oh goodness, be still my beating heart! So cute!

Then A4 took three shots. Look at that form!!

And messed about whilst dressed as Mayans:

We always dress up.  It allows the children to explore further the lives of the people and to experience to some degree parts of their lives, to become them for a time.  When we studied ancient Egypt the children off their own back opened up scribe shops in the back garden:

L the egyptian artisan, painting away

When they were learning about the Celts they built living and working areas outside, experiencing a little of the hardships:

And, my favourite by far, was when we were learning about the Nomadic Mongolians they built themselves a gur and proceeded to collect rabbit dung and persuaded their father to burn it in our wood burning stove just as the Mongolians did with cattle dung!

They lent all the chairs against the table at an angle and draped every cloth we had in the house over it. They made a door using a contrasting woollen tartan

And inside:

I just love their imagination used to recreate the interior!

And poor Gary about to burn the dung:

Ha! Another of his 'home-schooling experiences I'd rather not be having' expressions!!A huge part of our school is allowing the children’s imagination to run wild.  We put very few limitations around this process, encouraging it all.

Geography

This is fairly self-explanatory.  I look for specific features which stand out in the areas we are studying.  For example when we learnt about Egypt and Mesopotamia we did a huge project on rivers, mountains and the water cycle; when we learnt about Israel we covered coast lines and when we learnt about Rome we did a project on Mount Etna and volcanoes.  Sometimes the era or area we study is calling for nothing more than map work, which traditionally we have a lot of fun with.  For example a tasty, edible map of India:

The final product

Our rather large (about 3 meters by 2 meters) paper mache map of Great Britain and the surrounding areas to demonstrate the movement of the Vikings:

And file folder maps of Mesopotamia:

I have just written a post on how we are tackling geography this term, so for more information see here.

Explorer Study

I guess our first explorer study was the Exodus of the Old Testament, from Egypt to Israel.  Whilst not strictly exploratory the children did a large geographical and significance study on it, traveling on their own exodus, making manna to eat and an exodus blanket to sleep on:

Stopping for a bite of manna...

More recently we have studied Marco Polo, where once again much fun was had following in his footsteps:

Food packed up in a sack across C10's shoulders, we're all ready to go!

We again made one of our paper mache maps to show his travels, marking his route as we came to it in his autobiography:

A close up of the route we have taken so far (The same route Marco Polo took!)

His travel diaries gave us much material with which to choose activities from.  We wrote a play for the road and created medicinal concoctions to help with health issues that might arise along the way:

and mixing.

We also made an oil lamp to light our nights:

So cool!

These explorer studies link in well with our geographical studies, adding the wonder that geography sometimes lacks.  For the explorers, I will work particularly hard to find primary evidence as it is the first impressions of the lands they explore that tend to be the most interesting.  I loved reading Polo’s descriptions of the cultures and countries he came face to face with.  Nothing can better describe these things than someone’s first hand experiences of them.  Next year we will be, hopefully, reaching the explorer age and our studies will be all about the explorers.  Being related to Shackleton (on my mum’s side), I am fascinated by the exploring age and cannot wait to get there next year.

As always, each topic is supported with dvd’s, picture books, Google Earth and any other related resource I can get my hands on.

Tomorrow I will cover a few more of the areas I look to cover each time I plan.

Homeschooling the Middle & High School Years

20 comments

  1. You are so inspiring! Love, love, love your ideas!
    You really need to write a book or curriculum for us non-imaginative folk.
    For your young ones that may not be getting as much out of the study as the older ones…do you think you’ll revisit those eras again so that they can do the same projects as their older siblings did? Kind of like a cycle idea?

    1. Thank you Clara. I do hope what I’m writing is helpful in some way?
      I had planned to redo it all with my little ones and certainly we are keeping all the resources to reuse again, but we’ll see. For now I’m having fun just having fun with them!

  2. How cool is it to have a personal connection with Shackleton?! This is a wonderful and impressive summary of your approach to history. I can see that the children have been learning loads and having a great time together under your guidance. This is awesome!

    1. Most of the bought costumes we got from Amazon or charity shops, otherwise we put the others together from bits and pieces we own. The best thing we ever did for our dress up box was buy a load of different materials and blankets (from a textile shop that was closing down for pennies) and some giant nappy pins. They had a ball (and still do a few years later), using their amazing imaginations to put together some great costumes.
      I think the only post I ever wrote was on putting together a Viking costume and it can be found here:http://angelicscalliwags.com/2012/11/21/putting-together-viking-dress-up/
      Hope that helps!

  3. Your children are blessed by your creativity and hard work. My questions are the same as some above – Will you revisit again with the littles? Costumes?
    Again, thanks for sharing. Your children will not forget their history. You do a fantastic job of making learning enjoyable.
    Have a lovely day.

  4. The kids look like they are having so much fun – all the imagination and creativity they can run wild with – and I mean wild when they can convince you to burn rabbit dung!

  5. You are really so inspiring! Thank you for doing this series because, while your homeschool is what I’d love our homeschool to be, I just can’t ever quite get there. It helps to see your thought process. Last year, due to your posts on the middle ages, we did a study on Beowulf and it was so much fun! Is each day different in your history studies or do you have a sort of routine? Do you have the children record what you’re studying (like in the form of a lapbook or notebook pages) or do you just let it soak in?

    1. Thank you Tara! It is my pleasure to do this series and I am so pleased some one is benefitting from it!
      To answer your questions, my routine has changed over the years. It used to be history all day long and we would write notebooking pages and lap books (India and China both had a lap book) as well as all the hands on stuff. Now, because my son has chosen to study science and has himself a pretty full schedule doing so (it is what he wants to study at university), we only do history for one hour each day. These days I set myself a goal for the week (for example just recently we did a speech study and did that over one week) and I attempt to complete that goal (which often includes reading, writing and hands on fun). It is simple, stress free and when I look back we seem to be covering lots of stuff even if it is only an hour a day. The children tend not to write as much on a daily basis but have set assignments to do over the week or the term.
      Hope that helps, and thank you for taking the time to leave a comment!

  6. I love reading about your homeschooling! You are very creative and have some wonderful ideas! I like how you have a main focus and allow the rest to be intertwined within it, like the focus in history yet writing letters back home to a loved one based on that time frame.
    I think quite a few can benefit from your posts. I agree with the above comment that you could write a book on ideas of how to homeschool the way you do.
    Great posts!
    Thank you for sharing so much of what you do with all of us.

  7. I Love your homeschool!!!! May I come and join you?:))) why is it my son just gets stuck with textbooks, and that’s all I can think of?:)) thanks so much!!

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.