Ancient Rome

Having spent two months on Ancient Rome, we are moving on to Ancient African Civilizations. But, as I have done with our other big history projects, I want to share an outline of what we covered. So, here's a summary of our journey through the fascinating history that took us from seven villages on some hills to the birth of the Republic, then through the emperors and on to the collapse of the great Roman Empire.

One of our main resources was this book on Ancient Rome from our collection of Dorling Kindersley's Eyewitness Books.

I got a bunch of these books on different civilizations, and so far Lu's read the ones on Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and now Rome. The bite-sized chunks of information don't go into great depth, but Lu enjoys reading them. They're packed with beautiful pictures, and definitely help us imagine what life was like then.

This Site: Kids'Past.com is our central history resource.

It has many grammatical errors, and some dates were off, but on the whole, it's a very easy-to-read, straightforward world history paper. So, I edited the whole thing - from prehistoric humans to the Industrial Revolution (yes, I'm slightly OCD) - and turned it into a document formatted to our liking (picture size, font size, etc.) so that we wouldn't be dependent on internet signal (which is unreliable here), and to avoid having to look at the ads on the website.

We usually read 4 or 5 picture-full pages, discuss, and write. We're doing so much writing in history that I've decided to skip grammar as a separate class, and just include it in our history sessions. 

The writing consists of formulating questions and answers to what we just read. After coming up with a question, we focus on composing the answer. 

So, we'll usually read a couple paragraphs, discuss, write, continue reading, discuss, write some more, and so forth... 

 We use Wikipedia and other websites, like this one, 

to read more and to cross-reference.

We also do a timeline at the end of almost every lesson.

Here, Lu's making a comparative timeline
between Greece and Rome.

Documentaries, as always, played a huge part in our learning:

History Channel's Engineering an Empire, 

the Rome and Carthage episodes

Nat Geo's Julius Caesar, The Roman Empire

BBC's The Rise and Fall of Hannibal 

and

Nat Geo's Jesus, The Man  

(which was accompanied by our studies on Christianity)

Lu created a Word document as his final project.

 Apart from a few minor suggestions,

Lu did this all by himself!

Old Blocks, New Books, Fun Stuff, and Free Sites

 The very first birthday present I ever got Lu

- the one I got him for his 1st birthday -

was this bag of building blocks.

Not only is it the one most played-with item 

in his toy box throughout the years,

but now we even use the blocks for math class.

 They've been great for grasping area.

Lu has started his DK Eyewitness book on

Mesopotamia.

 He reads two pages - like these (below) - everyday.

Then, every three days,

 we go back and I ask him about the different pictures,

so he can explain them to me.

It works well.

Lu has been frying up a plantain storm this season!

 

So yummy.

He started typing up his research report on Hawks.

In the evenings,

Lu's been hanging out in Cha's office.

Both of them are using  

Sketchup (free 3D design program)

Lu is designing a hotel for fun,

while Cha is designing a clinic for real.

 FOR GRAMMAR

I found these two new free sites:

Grammar Bytes - interactive exercises

and

English for Everyone - printables

 

 October brings heavy rains, 

so dance classes will be out for the month. 

Not great news for Lu, who will miss his dancing.

 

 The kids tried out our homemade version of

Knowledge Pursuit

with 100 fun-filled questions

about science, math, health, and culture.

I got to deal the questions. Very fun!

And lastly, 

I wanted to share these shots I got

of Lu telling me a story -

 I love it when he tells me stories,

it's one of my favorite things in the 

whole wide world.

Math and Granola and 300 Spartans

 It was a pretty good week. 

But I'm ready for the weekend.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *  *   *   *   *   *

Starting school at 6:30am means math with granola...

A perfect combination.

 

 Fractions have been mastered (I hope),

and we've moved onto perimeter and circumference.

Since we use several different resources for math, we spiral a lot.

 

For extra practice, we've been using Cool Math -

a really great, free math site. Lu loves it.

We're almost done with our  

spelling and grammar workbooks. 

I still have very mixed feelings about these.

The spelling I think we'll keep using next year,

but the grammar is just kind of... blah.
Yet, to its credit, Lu does know his grammar.
Maybe I'll just use half of it or something.
So much repetition is definitely unnecessary.
Ugh... I think I'd already come to this conclusion.
Why don't I listen to myself?

 

We watched Last Stand of the 300

This is a History Channel documentary - not the movie. We watched it as part of our studies on the Persian Empire because, unlike the movie, it focuses more on the Persians than on the Greeks.

We did also watch the movie, 

but had to cover Lu's eyes and mute a few scenes.

We're working on doing one huge time-line for

Ancient Middle Eastern Civilizations,

before we start on Ancient Greece

(I can hardly wait!)

 

 *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

 One of my favorite fruits - Pitaya 

(no idea what it's called in English) is in season.

 A lovely snack!

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

There is no end to amazing insects around here. 

Today we found this crazy cactus-looking crawler.

 

Isn't he gorgeous!

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

And Lu is reading the last chapters of 

Little House on the Prairie

A Semester's Reading and The Land of Lha

Lu finished Robin Hood this week, 

and started on his second Little House book.

These are the books he's read so far this year (since January).

Lu says that, from this bunch,

Gulliver's Travels has been his favorite.

For our early-morning read-alouds, 

we're still reading from Shel Silverstein and Aesop's Fables.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *  

Every 6th week, we focus on a different kind of writing assignment. So far, we've done: personal narratives, descriptive writing, comparison/contrast essays, and how-to reports.  Over the week, Lu will write a few short samples,  and then one final, longer one.

Here's Lu's final How-To report -

How To Get To The Land of Lha

Lha is such a wonderful place to visit! To get to Lha, first go to Dala, but be careful of the humongous and ferocious one-eyed Hambulaka. Go to The Dinosaur Park and quickly slide down the Tyrannosaurus Rex's scaly tail into the black hole. Then, you will be jetted out into the air, 200 feet above the ground, in the land of Huku. Don't freak out! A giant frog will jump up and catch you on its slimy back. Next, order your frog nicely to hop 200 miles south to the Tunnel of Hazakaza. Finally, get off the frog and slowly walk through the tunnel. You are in Lha! Go visit The Bouncy Mushroom Park and Lha's other exciting and beautiful places.

Part of the assignment was to include adverbs, 

some proper nouns, and lots of adjectives. 

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   * 

And I have something totally unrelated to homeschool to share. 

We had a first showing of my latest choreography, 

here's a little 3-min snippet if you'd like to see a bit of my work .

Irregular Plurals, Music, Jewelry, and a Letter to the Mayor

I wrote about this not long ago, but I just have to say it again. Doing grammar straight off the screen is awesome. We also work with another grammar resource that I do print out. But, with this one, today for example, Lu is reading the sentences out-loud (with the required corrections) and raising his hand for every irregular plural noun, instead of copying the whole sentence and changing the underlined noun, bla, bla, bla, busywork. But, at the end of each couple of lessons - and this is the reason I like this resource so much - he does a creative writing assignment in his notebook. He gets all the concepts without all the copying - but does do the real, interesting writing.

Lu has two really old keyboard/pianos. One was mine when I was his age (!), and the other was left behind by someone. Anyway, both died a few months ago, after Lu had really gotten into playing. Something got into him the other day and he decided to fix one of them. He got inside of it, cleaned it out, reattached some wires, and voilá, it was fixed. He's been playing it every free minute he's had since then.
I guess that's music class taken care of!

This is Lu's jewelry-making station, in his room. This week he is working on a present for a little friend who is turning 5 on Saturday.
I love watching him work (and find it especially fascinating since I'm terrible at making things with my hands).


I've mentioned before that we're not nappers, but here's Lu passed out after yesterday's impromptu Civics field trip.

Last year, for a writing assignment, Lu wrote a letter to the incoming mayor asking him to please install trash cans in the park, so that the children wouldn't have to play amongst the rubbish.

(It's a pretty pathetic little playground, but it's all we've got).

We had to wait for January, when the new mayor would start his term, to go give him the letter, but things got hectic, and we forgot. Then yesterday we finished work up early and Lu suggested that we go present the letter, so we did.

Now, if you've been visiting us for a while, you know that Lu has been on stage many times. He gave a presentation on Dinosaurs. He performed the Pluto Monologues. He dances. He sings... But when Mr. Mayor came out of his office to see us, he FROZE SOLID.

I tried to eyeball him into talking, and told him to shake the mayor's hand out of the corner of my mouth. But Lu just stood there, looking at me and shaking his head in short, quick side-to-side movements, his hand waving the letter in front of the mayor with an almost neurotic twitch. Poor little guy, but I had to laugh. It was just so funny. Especially because it was unexpected. He's usually so outspoken!

So, I ended up presenting the letter, and the mayor kindly thanked Lu, who recovered and was able to laugh about it as soon as we left the building. I'm still giggling. It was a good little field trip too. We visited the police station (one room in the town hall, with one desk, two cops, and a telephone), the office of justice (one empty desk in a room with red curtains), the town treasury where town taxes are paid, and of course the mayor's quarters.

A Cool Bug Singing OurStory and Metaphors

... and the importance of commas.

Look at this groovy little dude we discovered on Sunday.
We were upstairs when we heard Lu start yelling at the top of lungs -
"Bring the camera RIGHT NOW! Hurry. HURRYyyyyy!!!"

After last week's semi-break (half days),
we're back to our full-day schedule.

We've been singing almost every day, and our repertoire is growing.

Today we sang them all:
(with links to lyrics)

Lean on Me - Bill Withers
Stand By Me - Ben E. King
Imagine - John Lennon
War - Bob Marley
El Rin del Angelito - Violeta Parra (Chile)Ojalá - Silvio Rodriguez (Cuba)
Come Together - The Beatles
Todo Cambia - Mercedes Sosa (Chile)

- - - - - - - -

We've also been working on idioms,
metaphors, alliteration and similes.

Here are some examples that Lu wrote in his notebook:

Simile - Jackie Chan is as strong as a mountain.
Metaphor - My dad is a calculator in math.
Alliteration - Tom tripped and tipped the tea.

- - - - - - - - -

Here are some of our recent Vocabulary words -

Dynasty, Heritage, Inference, Boycott,
Stupefied, Cantankerous, Colossal, Distorted,
Strikes, Nowadays, Genuine, and Whirlwind

- - - - - - - -

On Monday we started World History.
I've been getting ready for months - reading, writing,
planning, looking for videos, preparing activities...

Our first class was 2.5 hours long! We loved it.

I started out explaining to Lu that I don't agree with calling it History, because it means His-Story. Lu has been well formed in gender equality from a very early age, so he immediately saw my point.

So what do you call it?
OurStory. That's what I would call it. I told him that this was probably the subject that I found most important of all, because it's the story about us and where we come from - the story of all children, women, and men. He was literally bouncing with excitement at the thought of learning how all of this (the world we live in) happened.

The curriculum I put together starts with prehistoric human, but we ended up going back 13 billion years or so earlier to first talk about how it is that the Earth came to be. We watched several Birth of the Universe videos (on YouTube), and found some cute animations done by kids like this one.

It's so vast - all that time before humans. But right now, I just want Lu to have a general idea of how little time we've been here compared to how long Earth has existed, which in turn is relatively little compared to how long the Universe has existed. My head starts spinning if I think about it too much.

How is it possible that teachers didn't manage to get my interest in all of this when I was a child? It's so fascinating. When Cha got home, Lu told him all about it. I love when he's so excited about what we're learning. I'm excited too.

Timelines are going to be an important part of our studies in OurStory which, for the sake of readers who don't read this post, I will be calling History (so lame and lazy, I know). I had Lu do this Phanerozoic Eon Table, just to become familiarized with the names, but I doubt we'll spend much time on them, not this year anyway.

OK. Gotta go get ready for some Radiocarbon Dating.
Hope you're having a good week!