2011-2012 Curriculum, part 2 - Medieval Literature and Fine Arts

Last week we dove headfirst into the fifth century A.D., joining the barbarians and leaving the Roman Empire in the dust and rubble. We are very excited about this year's plans to study the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation -- and British literature! We're using Famous Men of the Middle Ages to guide us along for history, and supplementing with lots of lit.

Literature and Historical fiction

The legends of King Arthur & His Knights of the Round Table -- Eldest and Middlest are each reading their own versions, and we're listening to Benedict Flynn's audiobook together.

 

Tales from the Arabian Nights -- I found a child-friendly illustrated version at the library for Scott to read aloud in the evenings.

Beowulf -- an online version to read aloud

Beorn the Proud -- the story of a Christian girl and the Viking boy who takes her as a slave when his family attacks her village in Ireland 

The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle (library book sale find)

Adam of the Road by Elizabeth Janet Gray

Redwall -- this is off Middlest's shelf, and I'll pick up the audiobook at the library as well.

Joan of Arc by Diane Stanley -- library book to supplement our Famous Men of the Middle Ages reading

Matilda Bone by Karen Cushman

The Beggar’s Bible by Louise Vernon

Huguenot Garden

Morning Girl

Shakespeare
Usborne Stories of Shakespeare
Shakespeare for Kids
As You Like It (1936) - Netflix instant download
MacBeth : For Kids (Shakespeare Can Be Fun series)
Henry V (1989) - Netflix instant download

Poetry
Idylls of the king - Alfred, Lord Tennyson
A Foot in the Mouth: Poems to Speak, Sing and Shout

Read-alouds for Littlest

The End of the Beginning by Avi -- we're loving this book together

Various picture and poetry books from the library and our shelves boxes shelves (when I get the boxes unpacked), some taken from Ambleside's Year 0 list:

Mother Goose
A Child's Garden of Verses
The Little House
Make Way for Ducklings
Lentil
The Duchess Bakes a Cake
The Adventures of Peter and Lotta
Peter in Blueberry Land
Burgess Book of Animals



For all the boys:
Little Men by Louisa May Alcott, one of my all-time favorite books

Audiobooks:
Heidi
Wind in the Willows

Art
Last year our picture study was integrated into Lively Latin's history, so I didn't have to purchase or plan much else. This year we're using Harmony Art Mom's Artist and Composers Study. The Popular Composers CD is awesome. We accidentally listened to two weeks' worth of Vivaldi on errand day. Oops! ;)

Dore's Illustrations of Idylls of the King
Harmony Fine Arts - Artists and Composers Study, Medieval and Renaissance, Grade 2, with...

Art of the Middle Ages

Marguerite Makes a Book
David Macauley's Mosque, Cathedral and Castle (and the DVD version of Castle)
Michaelangelo by Diane Stanley

Music
Eldest - cello
Middlest - violin
Littlest - viola (He is counting down the days until his first lesson this Friday!)
Harmony Fine Arts - Artists and Composers Study, Medieval and Renaissance, Grade 2

That's it so far! Littlest's read-aloud list is far from complete, so perhaps I'll flush it out later on.

"It has come, the Spring!"

"...Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like? You don't see it in rooms if you are ill."
"It is the sun shining on the rain, and the rain falling on the sunshine, and things pushing up and working under the earth," said Mary...

...She unchained and unbolted and unlocked, and when the door was open she sprang across the step with one bound, and there she was standing on the grass, which seemed to have turned green, and with the sun pouring down on her and warm, sweet wafts about her and the fluting and twittering and singing coming from every bush and tree. She clasped her hands for pure joy and looked up in the sky, and it was so blue and pink and pearly and white and flooded with springtime light that she felt as if she must flute and sing aloud herself, and knew that thrushes and robins and skylarks could not possibly help it...

...The afternoon was even lovelier and busier than the morning had been. Already nearly all the weeds were cleared out of the garden and most of the roses and trees had been pruned or dug about. Dickon had brought a spade of his own, and he had taught Mary to use all her tools, so that by this time it was plain that though the lovely wild place was not likely to become a 'gardener's garden,' it would be a wilderness of growing things before the springtime was over.

 --Frances Hodgson Burnett, "The Secret Garden"

Mary and Dickon and Colin have been our literary inspiration lately.

On cool, grey or rainy mornings, we've been reading "The Secret Garden," studying botany, playing The Ladybug Game, continuing our Roman history, and trying to get started on a little spring cleaning.



Outside, we've pulled weeds, planted two avocado trees, three blueberry bushes, six rose bushes, a few lavender plants and lots of pansies, and watched our happy chickens scratch for bugs.

We've finished the first two chapters of "Exploring Creation with Botany," learned about angiosperms (flowering plants) and gymnosperms (conifers), studied the parts of a seed and their role in germination, identified the difference between monocotyledons (petals in multiples of 3, non-branching veins) and dicotyledons (petals in multiples of 4 or 5, branching veins), and collected samples for their notebook pages.

Tulip: angiosperm, monocotyledon

Western redbud: angiosperm, dicotyledon

Today I've been laid up in bed ala Colin (with a bit of food poisoning), but tomorrow we're hoping to get some summer veggies in the ground. It should be another lovely, sunny, warm spring day.

How are you enjoying springtime?

January days gone by...

Oh my goodness, I swear I did not give up blogging as a New Year's Resolution! How did it get to be the 16th of January with no new posts for 2011?! Is anyone even still here?

Apparently, we've been keeping busy.

After a full month away from anything that smelled like schoolwork, we Mommy needed a few days a week to transition back into our usual routine. I was also trying to figure out what Littlest meant when he requested to "start kindergarten" right after Christmas.

I went ahead and bought the My Father's World kindergarten curriculum I'd been looking at forever. Of course, I'm not using it exactly as it says, because I don't like following directions. And yes, I wondered through the first two weeks whether I should have ordered something different, or written my own curriculum, because I'm picky, cheap and indecisive.

But, so far, it's working out.
 
I do think it's more of a preschool curriculum, as they take the entire school year to introduce the first 26 letter sounds, but that's fine because he's only four anyway. The science is pretty basic, too, but I'm attempting to expand on it by coordinating the themes with the older boys' science. And I really like the Bible/character lessons that go with each week's theme.

Other things that kept us busy...

Fake snow that came in the boys' stockings.

The big boys took up their knitting again. (The gloomy cold outside was inspirational.) And Littlest learned to cast-on.

Lots and lots of reading, thanks to new books and gift cards for Christmas!

A little Celtic crafting with our history lesson.

Escapes into the sporadic sunshine, and visits to the park after too many days indoors.

The ever-changing, ever-present fort, and Nerf war.

And yes, even a little baking (the kids' fruitcake recipe from our new Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook)...

And somehow we managed to get all the Christmas decorations put away, too.