New Testament, Greek and Roman History

I had a change of heart on how to go forward teaching Ancient History to the boys second semester last year (Stop laughing, I know I keep tweaking things.  What can I say my approach is a work in progress.).  Rather than trying to get through all of Ancient History in one year, I broke things up into two years.  

Last year we focused on the Old Testament and the civilization that had a direct impact on it, i.e. Mesopotamia, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persians, Hittites, etc.  

This year we will focus on the New Testament, Greece and Rome.  What I like about this approach is that it allows us to layer much of what we learned last year.  As we start studying the Greeks we will have time to review what was happening in other parts of the world we already studied,  My hope is that this layering approach will really cement in the learning.

We are about six weeks into our new school year and our new plan appears to be going very well.

We are using "On the Shores of the Great Sea (OTS)" by Synge as the backbone of our study, along with the first 12 chapters of "Discovery of New Worlds".  This was the original "Story of the World" (literally titled that back in the 1800s).  For those looking for an alternative to the Bauer books I highly recommend this series, the chapters are short, sweet, entertaining and informative.  Plus if you're budget conscious you can read it for free online.

We started the year with review, reading Chapters 11 to 18 and notebooking(I like these Notebooking pages with Rows by Donna Young).  We will doing a notebooking entry for each book/chapter we read this year.

Though "On the Shores of the Great Sea" will be our backbone, we will be using a few other core books, along with extra books on the side.
 
Children's Plutarch "Tales of the Greeks" is another core book. This is a series of biographies of the big names of history that the boys are thoroughly enjoying as well.  It is one of many adaptations of the original stories written by Plutarch born around the Greek-Persian War. It adds more detail and reinforces the information learned in OTS.  It too is available to read on-line for free or purchase e-book/hardcopy.  Later in the year we will switch to Famous Men of Rome.

I am going to try to use "Streams of Civilization" by Stanton & Hyma as review at each break in history.  For instance, first we read the OTS chapters on the Greek-Persian War, then Plutarch and other books, then we wrap it all up with Streams of Civilization.

Here's my current list of extra books we plan to read throughout the year:

• You Wouldn't Want to be a Greek Athlete by Michael Ford Boys love these books!
• Olympics by Osborne
• You Wouldn't want to be a Slave in Ancient Greece
• The First Marathon: Legend of Pheidippides by Susan Reynolds This book is awesome! We found it by accident at the library. I've seen the boys pick it up to read again and again.
• Children of the Fox by Jill Paton Walsh  I can't remember reading a better piece of historical fiction in a long time.  It's three books in one.  I was reading the first book this weekend out-loud and they all begged me (even Chris) to finish reading the whole thing, no one wanted to wait to find out what happened.
• Secrets of the Parthenon (video free online) The boys found this fascinating.  In the middle Lance asked if it was an hour because he didn't want it to stop.
• You Wouldn't Want to be a Roman Soldier
• You Wouldn't Want to be in Alexander the Great's Army
• The Librarian Who Measured the Earth by Lasky 
• Roman City by David Macaulay or watch here The boys really enjoyed the video on Pyramids this past year, they asked to watch it many times.
• You Wouldn't Want to be a Roman Gladiator
• Cleopatra by Diana Stanley
• You Wouldn't Want to be Cleopatra
• I saw the Games in the Colosseum available in book or ipad interactive app
• The Flight of Pompeii available in book or ipad interactive app
• You Wouldn't Want to Live in Pompeii
• Pompeii Buried alive by Kunhardt
• Adventures in the Catacombs of Rome available in book or ipad app 
• Usborne Internet Linked Greeks and Romans (for reference or free time reading)
• Time Traveler - Story of Rome (for reference or free time reading)

So that's the plan and I think its one we might actually stick to this year :-)

Here's a random quote for the day:
Traditional school tramples the personality and starves the mind.

Rays Baseball!!

Who is Ray and why do we have his baseball??

After hearing the chant "Rays Baseball, Rays Baseball!!" for a few hours, that question rang in my brain.

Matthew just celebrated his 11th birthday and in continuing our tradition of incorporating baseball into our lives, we scheduled a trip to St. Petersburg to take in a Tampa Bay Rays game. From our house to the stadium it was a two hour drive. First pitch was scheduled for 12:10 which was great, since we could leave just after breakfast and be home for dinner.

I loaded up the boys and left the girls at home. The drive over was rather quiet; I don't think the boys were 100% awake, even at 9am.

We stopped at a Panera Bread near the stadium for a quick lunch break. The workers kept asking us if we were going to the Rays game. I can't figure out why, maybe it was all of us wearing Rays jerseys?? Well, all except Titus. After lunch, we arrived at the stadium and the first order of business was to buy Titus a jersey. He wanted one with a number on the back and we found one he liked.

First pitch was nearing and we headed out to find our seats. I feared we would have to walk around to the other side of the stadium to get to the outfield, but thankfully, the entrance we came in was just by our seats. We located our section and sat down just before first pitch. The first 5 innings were very quiet, baseball wise. It was "Parks & Recreation Day" at the ballpark and the stadium was filled to the brim with kids. It made for a very loud experience with boisterous kids and constant activity in the aisles as kids needed food and bathroom breaks. Also, the freebie of the day were noisemakers - inflatable cheer sticks. The kids loved them. Each package came with two and had to be blown up. They are basically long cylindrical balloons which make a loud noise when banged together.

The Twins tied up the game in the top of the 6th and we needed some drinks and snacks. I went down to grab something and Titus and Jared tagged along. Our timing was very poor as the Rays hit back-to-back home runs, one of which was hit very near to our seats! In the replay, I can just see Lance as he watches the ball come in and he points towards it. Very cute.....

The game really came alive after that and the last few innings were much more exciting. Thankfully, the Rays held on and won 4-3.

The drive home was much more lively, with the boys using the cheer sticks as swords and having many, many battles in the car on the way home.

Prince Lester

We were able to attend another theater production at the Orlando Shakespeare theater yesterday.  This time we saw a comical rendition of "Sleeping Beauty".  We went with the Mae, Matthew, Sophia, Lance, Jared, and Titus.  We took up nearly two rows in this cozy venue.

As we entered, we realized the boys were highly out numbered and we smiled at all the young ladies dressed up as princesses.  Apparently they all understood there would be audience participation; a detail we had missed.

First, they asked for six girls to volunteer to play the "Wise Women" and then they asked for one boy.  To our delight, they picked my beautiful Thespian Jared!  He was to play the young Prince Lester.  He was rather thrilled too.

He did a wonderful job with his facial expressions; the couple in front of us even took the time to complement his performance.  He even did a little ad-lib when they threw way his "horse" and he said "You can't treat Poppy that way!" and the other actor had to ask "Whose Poppy?" and Jared said "My horse."

Mae and I kept looking at each other and smiling throughout the play, it was a truly delightful rendering of the old classic. All the kids enjoyed it as well.

Unfortunately, they did not allow any photography during the show but we did get to take pictures with the actors after the performance.  Above is Jared is with Princess Rose and below with the older Prince Lester.

Character Sketches - Great Horned Owl

I have had this beautiful three volume set of Character Sketches sitting on my shelves for over six years.  Chris and I bought it at the last FPEA Convention we went to years ago.  The books link a character quality you want to encourage in your child with both an animal and a story in the bible.  Being the animal lovers that we are it seemed perfect.  The drawings inside are gorgeous (Audubon quality sketches) and the concept so inviting we couldn't resist.  The issue was that the boys were not old enough to appreciate them until now.  

As part of of our new school year that started this week, we have added this into our study.  After reading the suggestion of how to use the book, Chis and I decided to divide and conquer the task and this is how it worked.

The first animal was the Great Horned Owl.  On Friday, the boys and I read the scientific pages about the Great Horned Owl and then spent some time learning to draw a great horned owl.  Here's the neat drawing video we used:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjnp84HNT7A

Then we decided that breakfast on Saturday was the best time to get everyone together to do the study.  It didn't quite happen like that, but Chris did get together in the morning with the boys while I took Amber outside so that she wouldn't distract them.

First, Chris asked a general question about what they would do if....(choice the bible character had to make).  Then he read the bible story, they discussed some more and then read how the Great Horned Owl showed loyalty in his timing (the character quality).  

Then we told the boys to get dressed and we took a trip to the "Audubon Birds of Prey Center" to see a Great Horned Owl in person.

Much to our delight, a volunteer was willing to not only talk to us about these beautiful creatures but actually took one out for the boys to see up close.  He even pointed out their asymmetrical ears and gave a demonstration of how their wings allow them to fly silently compared to the other raptors on hand.   I was so thrilled I forgot to take any pictures till the boys were examining the feathers.  The picture above is a picture Chris took of the same bird (we think) years ago when he was doing some photography for the center.

We had a delightful time after this exploring the rest of the facility.  It was so exciting to have the opportunity to explore a subject from so many scholarly and hands-on angles.  We may not be able to do a field trip each week but my goal is to make it fun in some hand-on way. 

Next week the animal is the Canadian Goose.  Thankfully we saw them in person on vacation since they aren't in any zoos around here.  Though ironically we did get a photo opportunity at the Birds of Prey Center....

Back to the Books

I'm a tough schoolmarm.  I only give the boys three weeks off in the summer but the reality is that I know how life goes and I know my children.  If my boys turn off their brains too long they don't restart easily (like a car trying to start in really cold weather).  Also, I know life will happen (illness and other distractions) so that if we school year round we generally avoid the stress of feeling behind when life does happen and we take a short break.

However, we are not starting full time schooling till our friends go back to school in August.  I'm hoping to ease them into a very different schedule for the coming school year.  We are using a lot of different curricula and strangely (if you know me well make sure you're seated) much of it is from the same source.  I'm a self admitted curricula/book addict but am overcoming my addiction for the sake of my children.  LOL

Here's the full time schedule.  Right now we are at about 60% and will ramp up over the next six weeks.  Adding something new each week till we are functioning at full capacity (I hope).

LANCE (5th Grade):

Latin - Latina Christina I
Math - CLE Grade 6 and XtraMath
Spelling - All About Spelling
Grammar - English Recitation Grammar Workbook I
Writing - Classical Composition:  Fable Stage
Literature - CLE Grade 6 and Memoria Press Literature Guides (Lassie and Door in the Wall)
Geography - Geography I: Middle East, North Africa and Europe
Science - God's Design for Weather and Planet and Wonders of Creation (Weather, Ocean and Geology), and Planet Earth by Tiner w/ Notebooking supplements
Classical Studies - D'Aulaires' Greek Myths and Famous Men of Rome
History - Greeks and Romans via Tina's Curricula 

JARED (3rd Grade):

Latin - Latina Christina I
Math - CLE Grade 4 and XtraMath
Spelling - All About Spelling
Grammar - English Recitation Grammar Workbook I
Writing - Introduction to Composition
Literature - Memoria Press Literature Guides (Grade 3)
Geography - Geography I: Middle East, North Africa and Europe
Science - God's Design for Weather and Planet and Wonders of Creation (Weather, Ocean and Geology), and Planet Earth by Tiner w/ Notebooking supplements
Classical Studies - D'Aulaires' Greek Myths and Famous Men of Rome
History - Greeks and Romans via Tina's Curricula
 
TITUS (Pre-K):

I have ordered and have on my shelves a variety of resources to try with him this year.  I'll post later when we find the combination that works best.  He is showing both ability and interest in reading so that is the goal this year.

You'll notice a number of similarities in curricula between Lance and Jared.  Much of this is driven because of my change to using Memoria Press.  Jared is right on target for 3rd Grade but if I rush Lance ahead in all subjects he would be missing important foundational elements.  Doing subjects together is not new to us, frankly I feel its part of survival when you have multiple kids.  To that end, we have always done Science and History together as a family.  I have just expected more out of Lance than I did Jared; by using the note-booking method this is easily achieved.

We start out our new year this week and I'm sure I'll tweak things along the way but I think we are closer than ever to being on the best path for our family.

Summer Camp(S)!

This all started out so innocently.  The boys had such a great time at Westwood Farms Horseback Riding Camp last year we decided to have them do it again.  Then they wanted to stay the whole day.  That meant I would have to drive there twice, instead of hanging out, but Amber would get her nap... so we decided it would be okay. 

Then Lance and Matthew had done a three day baseball camp over Christmas that was offering a whole week over the summer.  That was hard to resist and it was conveniently the week before Horse Camp. 

Then I thought it seemed unfair that Jared was only attending one camp so I signed him up the week before Baseball Camp into a half-day Art Camp at the Orlando Museum of Art.  We had done many things with OMA in the past but leaving Jared alone would be new and a little stressful but it was art and only a half day I told myself.

So that's how I ended up with someone in camp for three straight weeks.  I congratulated myself on my planning thinking this would give me three weeks to do the stuff I needed to do before the new school year started....that was the error in my plan because for three weeks I was busy with kids at camp or those missing the kids at camp.  However, from the boys perspective it worked out great and really that's what it was all about anyway :-)

ART CAMP

Self-portrait

The first day we picked up Jared from camp he was so excited he couldn't contain himself.  He wanted to enthusiastically teach us and tell us all he had learned and experienced.  It was great to see!  He was a bit more sedate the rest of the week but no less excited.  By the end of camp he had some beautiful works of art to bring home and a greater appreciation for the art he sees.

Christ saying "It is Finished"

BASEBALL CAMP

Lance and Matthew had as much fun this summer as they had over the winter.  The Incinelli family really knows baseball and has a passion for teaching.  The camp went from 9am to 2pm in the sun so Lance was a bit more sedate/exhausted at the end of each day but no less enthusiastic.  I forgot to take any pics of them at camp but here's there Spring Ball pics I haven't posted yet.

HORSE CAMP

The boys absolutely loved being at camp.  In addition to riding, they cleaning the stalls, doing art, working out with Kyle, and helping out however they can.  They came home each day tired but with big smiles on their faces and stories about their day and their new friends.  Miss Janie and Miss Kassie had glowing reports each day on their behavior, which is always nice for a mother to hear.  The final day of camp they have a horse show to show off what they learned.  Lance won the Leadership Award and Jared won the award for Most Motivated.  It's no surprise they enjoyed camp, we alI like going to the "barn", as we call it, just to hang out, the atmosphere and the people are so awesome.  The barn is the only place we have found where the boys can learn some real old fashion responsibility in the city.  Learning to control a 1000+ animal is great for their self confidence and we think makes them more accomplished men.

Jared The Great Turns Eight!

Today was the big day he'd been counting down for all month.  He thought it would be a simple affair, as birthday's normally are around here.  However, we decided to throw him a surprise party after his swim lessons instead.

It was such a beautiful day, all the kids play great together and went back and forth between the pool and playground for a few hours.  Jared is such a friendly kid, making new friends where ever we go. It was a perfect end to an eventful year for our boy Jared.  Over this past year he has shown himself to be a young man who is quickly growing into a great man, who smiles in adversity.

His brother Lance wrote that Jared is "happy, loving, loud, silly...a super great brother....very special to me".  He clearly loves his brothers and sister very much. Amber has designated him her "huggy buddy".

His father wrote in his birthday card "I am very proud of you and admire the courage, bravery and strength you have shown in the past year".

Those two glowing reviews cover a lot of who Jared is but there is still more.

He's very intelligent and works diligently to successfully complete all his school work.  But he likes to have fun too and science experiments with dad are a favorite.  He told me the other day "I like experiments because something normal can turn into something unusual."  Very profound :-)

He has an inventor's mind. He likes to play with Legos/blocks(with intricate stories to go along with his creation), create art, play pretend, make new names/languages and has a basic desire to do everything differently.

In addition to swimming this year, he took up playing golf and riding...

But since Boston he has reached all new heights....

First time getting up in the tree.

His physical abilities have improved dramatically.  He does not tire quickly like he used to. He can swim, run, jump, and play with the best of them now. It's a great and humbling thing to see. We are looking forward to what adventures and great accomplishments happen in the next year for Jared!

The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you; The Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace.  Numbers 6: 24-26

LOVE YOU JARED!!!!

2012-2013 Wrap Up

What an incredible year we had studying the ancients surrounding the old testament.  Lance in particular really enjoyed studying the Egyptians.  As my first time creating a history curricula, I would say it was a big success.  Another change was trying out the note-booking method with our Astronomy Curricula; that too was a big success and something we will take further in the coming year.  A final big change was having the Lance and Jared take a nationally standardized test in addition to our normal evaluations.  I was very pleased to see that they achieved top scores in Math and Reading Comprehension and scored average or above in all other subjects.  I cannot say I was surprised at the results, but it was a nice confirmation that their strengths and weaknesses lie exactly where I thought.  This knowledge gives me comfort that I am on target with what I thought was going well and what I think needs more concentration in the coming year.

In addition to ending our school year, May also brought our baseball season to an end.  Lance and Matthew played together on the Minor (10 & under) Rays.  As is their nature they had a great time; win or lose. Matthew plays first base and also pitches. Lance mostly plays catcher and they are both playing very well.

Titus is also looking forward to his future in baseball as a catcher.

Shenandoah Vacation - Final Days

We wrapped up our vacation with a visit from our friends.  They arrived at the resort shortly after we returned from Monticello and stayed in a Yert across from our cabin (they are more adventurous than us).  We did some swimming that night, talked and just hung out together.

The next day, Gary helped the boys all do some fishing, Chris took two out on the kayak and we went on a Pontoon ride around the lake.  Funny part was that we were all having so much fun we forgot to take many pictures.  That evening we went back to the pool, fed the horses again and tried to identify the constellations (that's the homeschooler in us).

The next day we all checked out and went our separate ways.  Our friends continued their 50 state tour, we headed back to the Amtrak and Auntie Susie headed for few days in the forest followed by a visit with family in Ohio.  So glad we finally made it to Shenandoah we will definitely be coming back.

Shenandoah Vacation - Monticello

We tried to alternate staying one day at the resort and driving around the next during our vacation.  Today was another driving day and the destination was the historic home of Thomas Jefferson - Monticello.

Bet this wasn't the picture you expected to see, it's not what we expected either but boy were we pleased.This is just part of the extensive gardens.  Since we walked up to the house from the visitors center instead of taking the shuttle we got to truly appreciate all the gardens.  As we explored each of the boys took a turn at taking pictures of each other and the gardens.

They have detailed garden tours where they explain all the incredible variety of plants on the estate.  I would love to take that tour some day, but this time we only did the house tour and explored the grounds ourself.

Lance's special six leaf clover.

The house tour was incredible and very child friendly.  Over 90% of the house furnishings are original and the stories told along the tour were fascinating.  What was really neat was that back at the visitors center (among many other adult museum exhibits), they have a kids museum.  The hands on museum includes many replicas of the things kids would like to touch on the house tour; including his copy machine, along with areas for acting out the life of the workers on the estate.

We will definitely being going back someday when the kids can appreciate all the exhibits, there was so much to see you could easily spend more than one day.