Happy New Year!

It's all over for another year and I feel quite sad. I don't feel that we all got out of the period what we could or should have because we were all ill at one point or another :o(
The tree is down and the decorations have gone away, the house has been vacummed and re-vacummed, the pressies have all found a home and the house is ready for another year. Plans have been made and holidays booked, school work has been sorted out and gotten ready for a new year so everything's ready to welcome 2011 and all that it holds into our life.

Winter has definitely arrived!

The snow has finally melted away but we are threatened with more this weekend so it's been a mad dash to the shops to finish the Christmas shopping and to try to get organised.

Academic school work has dwindled to nothing, but there is still lots of activities happening such as looking after animals in the cold weather, watching the icicles grow and then melt at certain temperatures, calculating how high up the hill to go to get a really good speed downwards on the sledge, cooking biscuits, mince pies etc, helping out at Christmas sales at church, going to carol services,visiting friends and relatives, wrapping presents and lots of work on the website.

We are eagerly awaiting the arrival of a book recently ordered from here. The author is another home educator and has done lots of material to use with the book for free so I'm looking forward to snuggling up with the book very soon :o)

SNOW!!

Birthday Cake and weekly round up

Wow! What a gorgeous looking cake made by my son and it tasted good too :o)
It was made to celebrate my eldest daughter's birthday.

Love pictures like the one below: my youngest snuggled up in her 'pudsey' blanket enjoying a good book :o)

We are having a few weeks off lapbooking science and have decided to read about Archimedes instead, even though strictly speaking he was a mathematician, I think. However it is a really good read and would make a delightful lapbook but I think we really need a break, sort of winding down towards Christmas :o)

Above is my daughter's homework for art group.

We've finished our Cultures around the World lapbook, just haven't taken any photos yet so we've started a lapbook on Maps this week, just a quickie, sort of a refresher one as we covered maps a few years ago and my youngest has started her research on Elizabethan clothes.

We are doing Algebra in Maths and continue to work through an English workbook. My son is continuing with learning Java, but is currently away in London with his dad, so it's been a really quiet end to the week :o)

Middle Ages Resources

As soon as the lapbook is completed I get a little lazy about putting up the resources we used and end up forgetting where I got most of them from but I'll try to do my best. My previous post has a few on it but I've posted a few more below:

Here are lots of lesson plans to go along with a few books that we read by Karen Cushman such as The Midwife's Apprentice, Catherine called Birdy and Matilda Bone.

Here is a Middle Ages site map which has absolutely loads of informations on it.

Here is a Paint the Cathedral Game.

Here is an interactive castle game.

Here is even more information on the Medieval time period.

My youngest didn't play this one but it sounds very good.

A collection of recipes can be found here.

As well as all of the above we read lots of books such as Castle Diary, which I bought from the library for 10p! The books already mentioned by Karen Cushman, The Kevin Crossley Holland Trilogy about King Arthur, The Once and Future King by TH White, also about Arthur; A proud taste of Scarlett and Minerver by Konisburg about Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine and her famous husbands and children, this one has been read and reread already and much enjoyed. Robin Hood by Roger Lanclyn Green is another favourite; Black Horses for the King by Anne Mcaffrey, Fire Bed and Bone by Henrietta Temple, The Bedouins Gazelle by Francis Temple (I haven't read this one so can't say what it is about other than my daughter enjoyed it); Otto of the silver hand by Howard Pyle and Crusades by Elizabeth Laird, a particular favourite author of my daughter's.

We also used SOTW Middle Ages as our spine book along with Our Island Story.

We watched a few programmes from the BBC Medieval Season, but our favourite by far was Christina - Story of a Medieval Girl.

Last but not least is a quiz to see how much we learned.

Middle Ages Lapbook

I got this lapbook from HOAC and I'm really pleased with it. It is choc-a-block with information and you can tell that alot of thought has gone into the graphics.
My daughter loved doing it too as it is such an interesting time period to study with lots of craft activites to go along with it.

The front cover is done by writing calligraphy as the monks did, but not having any velum lying around we had to make do with tea dyed paper, although it took nearly as long as the velum to dry out ;o)

Below is all about the knight, from his armour to a scroll about his codes of chivalry.

The first full flap below is sort of an introduction to the Middle Ages with high and late Middle Ages flaps and dates for the Medieval time period on the visor of the helmet.

The right hand side below is about the knights tournaments and parts of a castle.

Below is the late Middle Ages flap but the phot has got out of sequence ;o)

Below is the back of the first full flap and contains information on the Black Death, declining population and reasons for low population; the latter was an extra added in because there was just so many reasons as you can see from the photo below!

The next two photos of the top flap is about Medieval foods, Common Life, The Feudal system and a Society Pyramid.

Below is the back of the top flap and contains information on Charlemagne, Duties of the Parish Priest and The Rights of the Magna Carta.

The base of the lapbook contains more information on the knight's life such as Weaponary, Becoming a knight and their responsibilities and the Crusades. My daughter laid it out so that when the bottom and top flaps were open, the entire base of the lapbook would be about knights

leaving the flaps for information about the peasants and general life during the Middle Ages.

Below is a photo of our Motte and Bailey Castle, the blue bit in the corner is a pond that my daughter added. The instructions for this can be found here.

Below are the practice sheets of calligraphy my daughter used before writing the front cover and menu.

Belkow is the menu, complete with some recipes from the lapbook and rather surprisingly they tasted really good. We did extras though just incase but we didn't need them (again on tea dyed paper).

Below are photos of the shields we made, all of which come from my husband's family name (Scottish names are so much easier to research than English ones).

A list of programmes and films watched and additional books read to follow in next post as I think this one has been long enough :o)

Edwardian Farm and Downton Abbey

We've been looking at the Edwardian time period recently, quite by accident really. We started watching this and then this and you can read the blog about the Edwardian Farm here. We also saw a programme on a few nights ago about setting up a high street during the Edwardian time period called Turn Back Time, there's a type of blog about it here.

It's a time period that we haven't looked at before so we've learnt alot already just by watching the programmes without getting any books out but I suspect we'll get them out fairly soon and then look at World War One as my youngest is keen to do some of the worksheets here.
We also have a Hands of a Child lapbook about World War 1 but I'm not sure whether we'll go into it in that much depth yet, maybe next year, because the Middle Ages study is taking longer than I anticipated as the period is such a large one to do about. (Will post more about Middle Ages when finished).

Below are some Edwardian links I intend to use over the coming weeks:
Here is a link for colouring pages.
Here is a website with lots of info on The Edwardians.
Here is a timeline.
Here is a worksheet on education during the time period
Here are tales from a London Tenement house.
There is lots of info on this site.
I think we'll round up with an Edwardian afternoon tea and scones, yes that sounds good... off to paint shields and prepare decorations for our Medieval Feast.