Age of Discovery, Week 1

After Halloween we started our new main lesson books on The Age of Discovery. So far we have reviewed the feudal system of the Middle Ages and read "The Growth of Cities," "King John and the Magna Carta," and "Scotland and England." Students have come up with really creative entries for their main lesson books, including "How to Burn a City in the Middle Ages (And Not Get Caught)," "How to Clean a Potty for Dummies" (hint: tossing it out the window and into the street is an option, as long as it doesn't land on royalty) and even a Wanted Poster offering a large reward for a runaway serf. It was a surprise to learn that serfs could gain their freedom by running away to a city and not being caught for a year and a day! We also used the lovely book Rose Windows and How to Make Them to create some beautiful Gothic-style stained glass window illustrations for the MLB.

Two students from our homeschool co-op attended the 5th HackSI event over this past weekend. This two day 24 hour hackathon (Saturday and Sunday from 8 am to 8 pm) was held at the Southern Illinois University campus. Both students had a great time!! One of them, my daughter Leah, was even interviewed by the local TV station: "HackSI Grows Young Minds." She was so excited to be on the evening news talking about her project.

We are still reading The Cat Who Went to Heaven as our read aloud story. We also continue with "Nature" in Philosophy and will be finishing our Leaf Print artwork to benefit For Kids Sake tomorrow. Freeze Tag replaced Sardines as the top choice for the outside game at Recess, and the wet weather recently has allowed us to have some indoor recess board game time. Bingo, Boggle, Visual Brainstorms, Life on Earth Memory Game, and Yoga Pretzels have all been off the shelf and in play over the past few days.

We are also discovering new favorite chapter books. One little girl said to me last week, "This book is soo good I can't stop!" and begged to be able to take it home tonight so that she could see how it ends (The Secret Three). My daughter Becca found out today that she's a descendant of William Wallace and is now diving into The Scottish Chiefs, a book I got as a Christmas present from my grandparents in 1992 according to the note inside the front cover. Another little boy asked for a book that was more exciting than what anyone else in the class had... so I gave him a lovely vintage book of Land and Sea Monsters. He's thrilled and immediately informed me that he already knows what a griffin is.

Students have also given me a few pieces of their work to publish in the blog. One Morning Pages writing prompt was about an unusual classroom pet and the other was about seeing a very strange color in Autumn:

"My teacher has the weirdest pet of all time. It is an antelo-flaming-oceros!"


"My teacher has the most nicest pet in the whole wide world and I like that his name is Archie. Thank You."


"The strangest color I ever saw in Autumn was when I walked outside to see that everything was purple except for the blue clouds and orange grass. My cat which was usually orange was lime green and my skin was yellow. True story."


"The weirdest time was when the leaves turned pink and weirdness! Thank you!"

Another student asked me to publish his rough draft of the "Missing Serf" Reward Poster. He was so proud of all of his hard work! I was pleased to be able to offer him the Prismacolor Colored Pencils, Portrait Set, which I had sitting on the Art shelf. A friend donated these pencils over the summer and I knew this would be a perfect project for them!

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