A Moorish Feast

We're still loving every minute of history lessons.  Jonah was so excited to surprise Daddy with a moorish feast last Friday when he got home from work.  And I must say, lounging and eating was a lot less messy than I expected!

Spanish Tortilla or omelet - really yummy and simple - potatoes, onion and egg!

A Monk's Supper

We are beginning our medieval history unit and I'm loving it.  I'm particularly taken with learning about the saints as we watch how Christianity spreads through Europe.  I think it is because so many of the stories are new to me and yet, they make the stories of the Bible come alive for me in a new way.  We've been enjoying lots of books on the saints to supplement our curriculum and had a monks dinner a few nights ago.

Dinner was candlelit and was supposed to be entirely silent while scriptures were read throughout.  We were quiet while a couple chapters were read and, because I turned out the lights, dinner did have a more hushed quality.  We ate lentil soup, cut apples and pears, and crusty bread (with no butter or jam).  But, as Jonah pointed out, aside from the absence of butter it was a very normal meal for us.  But, they liked their monks dinner so much we've now had three meals by candle light with Bible reading at their request.  We'll see how long this lasts, but I'm loving it!

A few books on saints we've enjoyed in the past week...

The Holy Twins by Kathleen Norris illus. Tomie dePaola

Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland by Tomie dePaola

Augustine came to Kent by Barbara Willard

Early Saints of God by Bob Hartman

Outside

Every year by February I'm convinced that I don't actually like the outdoors, which makes me feel guilty and slightly depressed.  But then every year,  the sun comes out and I find myself finding lots of reasons to step out my door to 'check' on something and I'm all of a sudden trying to move much of our day outside.  I sigh a sigh of relief, 'oh, I do like being outside when there is sun'.  Some year I'll remember this and not beat myself up about winter days spent huddled at the heater, but for now, I'm just enjoying being outside more and more each day.

Now don't read this wrong.  It is not overly warm here, but the sun has returned.  Our days are lengthening (note: we are at the same latitude as Juno, Alaska and have only a few hours of daylight midwinter) and during the day there is sunshine (for brief periods - but it is there!)

So today we took our history lesson outside and it was such fun.  I got the boys going and then stood there sipping my travel mug of coffee watching them.  And then, feeling very hopeful that spring is coming, I took this year's first ouside-drying load of laundry down from the line.

History Lesson Note: We read about the early civilizations in India today, but the largest part of the lesson was discussing why the first civilizations were built along rivers.  To emphasize how they traded I made a chalk river, three houses/cities and gave each house/city a harvest (beans, pasta, and marrow peas).  Jonah brought out our boats and the wooden figures traded goods up and down the river.

After all the shipping Jonah gathered the harvest up saying it was winter and they had used all their food.  So we then drew plowed fields and seeds to start another harvest.  This is when things got interesting for our poor ancients.  Jonah monster on his scooter and mummy and baby monster on the didicar then came pillaging their fields each night for seeds to eat... but hey, it was fun and I think he got the point.

Egypt

So, we've been studying Egypt this week and while playing tomb robbers (at mummy Finn's tomb) was the biggest hit, there have been lots of fun times...

we wrapped fancy buttons and craft jewels in Mummy Finn's linen to be his treasure

 made lego and cardboard pyramids for a little Egypt display

and created a Senet game and came up with some rules.

Play Full History Lessons

We were given an activity book for The Story of the World: Volume One by Susan Wise Bauer and I began to look through it.  It looked interesting to me and I put it aside thinking we might do some in the fall, but Mr. 4 found it.  He looked through the work pages; fascinated by the maps he asked when we could start.  So I ordered the actual book and we began this week.  We are flying through (I was thinking one chapter a week max, but this boy is begging for history lessons - and hey, its fun!)  

I'm posting the following to help me document what we are doing and to share the playful nature of these history lessons, which I really appreciated.  But, no worries, I'm not going to bore you with our history lessons each week.  But, just this once indulge me and read along.

We began with a godly play of creation (as you can see, not with the typical godly play creation cards - I've made the cards from foam board, but prefer using figures that can be played with - the boys have such fun this way).  I've been doing our godly play and figure stories (we do a lot of fairy and folk tales) at the table recently. That way Rowan can watch and listen, enjoy a snack, and be kept at arms length while I tell the story.  

The second day we began the actual book, it begins with the first people living as nomads.  Oh, it was such fun.  We did the lesson and then I scattered wooden acorns and eggs, toy lizards and deer, a few leaves, and a jar of honey around the house.  We would 'camp' in one room while we gathered the food into Jonah's 'game pack' and had a few nighttime sleeps.  When we could find no more we would move on and set up camp somewhere else in the house.  Let me just say it was a hit, we played for a couple hours and even moved outside for some more.   My favorite part was seeing Rowan play along, pretending to eat the wooden eggs we 'cooked' on our fire, finding things, going night-night with us (sometimes) and loving the tent!

 The second day was the second half of the first chapter.  It was on how some nomads eventually became farmers.  We learned about the fertile crescent and Jonah LOVED coloring the map.  We then played.  I had laid blue blankets out to be the river and we dug canals, planted felt seeds (which miraculously grew into plants and gave fruit), we ate horse meat, began to cultivate goats and sheep, sang "Oats and Beans and Barley Grow" and "Seeds for my Garden" (Jack Grunsky) and built a house with our couch and chairs.  We played for a long time and Daddy had to be taught the game again when he arrived home.

Day four we made a shaduf (to go with the lesson above).  It was messy, but it worked watering the tea towel with water from the sink.  We finished the Egypt chapter today and I'm pretty sure Jonah will expect to do the next chapter tomorrow.  He has run down from his 'rest time' all week asking if it is time to do history yet.

This is the only 'work' we are intentionally doing right now, but we are covering some geography, art, earth science, time sequencing, and Bible in amongst these simple lessons.  It amazes me how little I am putting into these lessons and how much Jonah is getting out of them.  More than just what he is learning, he just seems fuller, happier and generally more content the last few days and I really think having this time and something new and interesting to learn about is filling him.  And I'm finding that it is easier for me to play when there is a little more guidance for the imaginings.  There was no shortage of creative ideas for our nomad play (let me tell you, there were some mighty ferocious wild cats everywhere!), but still having some general structure helped us all to be in the same world (I get lost in Jonah's worlds sometimes which he finds very frustrating - and I really do try).