All Roads Lead to Rome

The girls were very pleased to finish their lapbooks today. I did tell them that if they finished them today that they could watch the final episode of Roman Mysteries so I think that may have helped them along. Don't you just love bribes incentives.

I must say that I am really, really happy with how much they have learnt about Ancient Rome. I think the BBC series has really helped them learn and retain more than they would normally.

I ended up getting some more great things for our Ancient Rome Lapbook from Homeschool Share. 


They really put a lot of work into these lapbooks and they are so very informative. There are actually more printouts on the back of the far right page ... whew!  We have included famous ancient Romans, roman numerals, some Latin words, a map, legend of Rome, Roman gods and goddess', architecture, gladiators, wars, Mount Vesuvius and such.


I asked the girls if they had enjoyed doing this study and they both agreed it was "really good".

Rome Wasn't Built In A Day.

Whilst in Melbourne, looking through a DVD store for a gift for my own dear father, I came across a BBC series called "Roman Mysteries". I thought it looked pretty interesting and so purchased Series 1 for my daughters. They weren't too thrilled with the idea of it ... there were no Disney stars or ponies you see.

Anyway on our return, about a week later on a particularly wintry afternoon, I popped the first DVD on and WOW, the girls were mesmerised. I had a hard time just restricting them to one episode at a time and each day were pleadings to watch more. Is there anything better to have than something like this to hold over a child's head ... all chores were done with a minimum of fuss and speed that week if they wanted to see the next episode.

The girls were so into the series that I googled it and found that the Roman Mysteries is actually a series of 17 historical novels for children by Caroline Lawrence. The stories take place in ancient Rome and it's about four teenage children (except for Lupus who is only 11) who solve mysteries and have adventures in Rome, Greece, and other places. The main characters are Flavia, a Roman girl; Nubia, a slave girl from Africa; Jonathan, a  Jewish boy; and Lupus, a mute beggar boy. The BBC has made 10 of the books into a series which whilst is entertaining is also a great way for a young person to learn something of ancient Rome.

My own girls were in stitches after seeing a scene with Lupus holding a sponge on a stick which is what ancient Romans used to use to wipe their bottoms after using the toilet.

The stories have sort of taken hold of them and since then we have read a few books on Ancient Rome. It's great when we read something and they get excited when they can relate it back to the series. It seems to make it more real to them.  We have also started compiling an Ancient Rome lapbook produced by Dynamic 2 Moms to which I'll add some things relating to the Roman Mysteries series.

Last week I went and purchased the second series and the girls are really enjoying it also. From what I can tell there is no Series 3 yet and I am not sure if the BBC are producing one. I am sure that Caroline Lawrence's books are much better than the series but sadly our local library doesn't have them so I will have to order them from the good old Book Depository.

Now if anyone can recommend a good DVD series on ancient Greece or Egypt that will be the rest of the year covered for history. Do your children prefer living books or non-fiction? Mine struggle with non-fiction unless it is a subject really close to their hearts. Maybe I need to write to Caroline Lawrence and suggest she start writing a series for children on these places too!

Living the Olympics ...

After watching the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony. we decided to dress as ancient Greek girls today. When I say we, the girls were the Greek girls and I was the ancient part ...

We made laurel wreaths from some branches that we cut from our olive trees. They may not have been from the Olympia olive trees but we gave it our best. Between you and I those old wire bread ties are great for holding the branches together, as they kept unwinding and flinging apart.

The toga's were simply some white satin material that we found in the material box (some unfinished project of mine probably!) and tied over one shoulder and then teamed with a pair of white sandals.

A styrofoam cone spray painted cold with some paper flames and voila ... an Olympic flame.
Forever the ham, Agent Smelly pretended to burn herself on her flaming torch ...

Amelia has flown her final flight ...

Another successful lapbook completed this week. The girls have had a great time working on Amelia Earhart. We didn't end up putting a lot into the book but then sometimes you can put stuff in them for the sake of it and I really didn't want to go down that road.

The fact that they did a lot of the preliminary work on their own on this lapbook (reading books and things on the web) made me very happy. So despite these ones not being as busy as some that we have done in the past I felt we covered the subject very well.

Olympic Lapbook

For once I actually got the girls to do a study on an event before it actually started (and sometimes even finished). So instead of rushing the subject through, they have actually completed their study and lapbook ahead of time. A great cause for celebration!

The Fashionista's front cover.

We studied the history, different sporting events and a small bit on where the games are being held this year. We have previously done a unit study on Great Britain so I didn't really think the girls needed to labour over this again.

Because there was so much to put into this lapbook,  we had to pop an extra insert (the green page) into the lapbook.

 

Here's Agent Smelly working on different sports. There was a list of descriptions and they had to work out which description went inside which mini sports booklet and glue it inside.

Most of the inserts we used were from www.homeschoolshare.com

Just be aware than many of the Olympic downloadables that you will find online will be made by our American friends and therefore aimed towards them.

The girls also made their own mascots, on the London Olympics site which they really enjoyed doing. I couldn't print them off the site so The Fashionista took some photos of the PC screen and we printed them from that. I really thought it was great that one of the mascots that could be made up was geared towards the Paralympics.

Some of the little books still need to be filled in, like keeping a medal tally on their chosen team, etc. These we'll do whilst the games are actually on.

We may even hold a mini family games and have some of our own olive trees to make some wreaths from but can do these in the two weeks between the start of term 3 and the Olympics beginning. 

Flying with Amelia

This week we made some more inserts for our Amelia lap book and then I had the girls make some paper aeroplanes using some fantastic instructions off the Internet.

Agent Smelly putting together one of her "many" designs.

As you can see the Fashionista was having a ball flying one of her planes.

The Papa got home as we were flying them and had to show us all one of his designs and then they all went outside to see whose would fly the furthest.

Seriously, this plane accidentally landed in my hair, which had the girls nearly wetting

themselves laughing.

A very successful and fun lesson on Amelia today.

Introducing Amelia Earhart

This term the girls wanted to study Amelia Earhart. Always happy to oblige when they actually ask to study someone, I purchased a couple of books for them and did some research on the internet.

The first book I purchased was one of the Young Patriots Series. Both my girls highly recommend these books. They mostly focus on the famous person whilst they were young and are written in a story format, which is easier for the kids to get into. I was able to give this book to the girls to simply read by themselves which made life easier. I get a bit tired with all the read alouds we do.

I also purchased a DK biography aimed at youngsters, which details Amelia's life with lots of charts, photo's and timeline, etc. This in conjunction with information we obtained off the internet has really made us be able to get a good grasp of her life. This book we used to read together, they really are not into non-fiction yet so left to their own devices they'd still be labouring over this.

These are the covers of their lap books. I like the way they decided to open them up a little differently to the normal way.

We have also made a couple of items to go inside (www.homeschoolshare.com have a pile of free lap booking things on Amelia Earhart which made life easier) but generally we don't assemble our lap books until we have finished making all the things that we wish to go in them. It makes assembling and fitting things in a lot easier.

This should take until the end of term to complete.

What a load of Pollocks ...

The third artist we have worked on is Jackson Pollock. A little different to the other two artists, as Jackson was so much later than the others and probably a little less known outside of the U.S. Also his style and especially his technique was very different (and appealing to the children).

The Fashionista's completed page. They enjoyed "making a mess" so much that rather than paste a wee picture of his on their page they did another one of their own.

Agent Smelly's page. It is interesting to see the colours they chose; they reflected their personalities.

The Fashionista's copy of  "Number 13A: Arabesque". Whilst impossible to copy a "splat" they did well to get the colours very close to the ones in Mike Venezia's book.

Agent Smelly copied Autumn Rhythm. She got some lovely big blobs on the canvas by squirting paint directly from the tubes.


The girls really enjoyed "action painting" just like Jackson. They ended up with paint all over them (definitely an outside class people!) and kept coming into my kitchen and taking whisks, etc to try and fling paint with. In all, a thoroughly entertaining style of painting.

It was also interesting that they did not enjoy Jackson's earlier style of painting which was when he was influenced by other artists that he admired and trying to imitate their styles. It was the perfect opportunity to explain to them that you can truly be at your best when you are true to yourself!


Please visit http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/blog/2011/06/worlds-greatest-artists-unit-study.html for the curriculum we are using for the above artists study. Erica kindly has a free program that she made and shares with people.

Picasso, who knew!

The first artist the girls worked on in their World Famous Artist unit study was Pablo Picasso.

This is Agent Smelly's first page. Her original painting was done in water colours and is of one of our chickens and their coop. I have the little flip book open and although not easy to see one of her comments on "The Old Guitarist" page reads "(gloomy)" ...

This is The Fashionista's page. We were working on Scotland for our geography at the same time, so I think she merged them together when asked to do an original in the way of Picasso. The puzzle which I removed from it's pocket to show you, is "Girl Before a Mirror" and her favourite picture "The Three Musicians" is displayed on the flip book.

Copy time: The Fashionista's painting is on the right, Picasso's on the left. I think she did an amazing job and she loves it so much she is going to display it on her bedroom wall. Unfortunately we can't find the name of the painting as we took the picture off the web.


Agent Smelly didn't get to complete her "copy work". She loves "Girl Before a Mirror" but there was quite a bit of work involved for her so we've put it to one side to complete over the summer break.

Pablo is Agent Smellys' favourite artist to-date. I am also not sure that either of the girls were able to understand how to actually draw "cubism" but they certainly did end up understanding it (as did I) and thus realising what a true genius Picasso actually was. I used to look at some of his paintings and say "gees a kid could do that" but how wrong was I. People it's really, really hard to do!


Visit http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/blog/2011/06/worlds-greatest-artists-unit-study.html for a free copy of the program we are using.

The Artist within ...

For the last couple of terms, the girls have been learning about World Famous Artists.

I am using a unit study that I obtained from the Confessions of a Homeschooler blog. Erica is a homeschooling mother of four beautiful children, who lives in the States, and somehow manages to find time to produce some great homeschooling products.  Best of all this generous woman let us download this study, for free!

This has been my girls favourite subject since they started it. The unit study works in conjunction with a series of books (see below) which we purchased through The Book Depository.

These books would have to be my best find of the year. Every opportunity the girls get, they are dragging these books out and showing them to visitors. They love the fact that Mike Venezia (author and artist) puts wee jokes and cartoons in them along with some of the artists paintings. I also read them to them with an accent (a really, really bad accent) depending on where the artist originates from. I really shouldn't have started this because now I am not allowed to read them normally and sometimes they want me to read them in front of guests!  We only have eight of the artists books so far, which is all that is needed to complete this program but, we have more on our "book wish list" to purchase. We have also purchased one book from Mike's music series,  Tchaikovsky, which we used when we studied Russia in our geography session.

We have tweaked Erica's program slightly as we've gone along to suit our personal needs better.  For example each girls is also making their own book to display their works rather than the lapbook suggested, as the girls decided they wanted to display their paintings in it too.

The front cover of the Fashionista's booklet.

There are holes on the left of the page which they want to tie ribbons through to put the book together with.

For each artist we spend a couple of sessions reading the book about the artist and choosing a picture to "copy". I found if I left choosing til the day we were going to paint it, then a certain Fashionista spent most of the session trying to make a decision and left no time to paint.


In the study there is a "flip book" to complete (the girls cut out then, fill out some details on five paintings) and another time they cut up a puzzle that comes with the study also. Agent Smelly cheats as after she has cut up her puzzle she files it away in order so that she can simply remove it from it's pocket and lay it out. We thought she was rather brilliant at putting them together so very quickly til we caught onto her ... little rascal! 

The next to last thing we do is to make up and complete a wee "artists" card. On one say is the artists name and on the other side they fill in some details (see above). They all go into the pocket which we'll add to a page towards the end of the unit.  We are still fine tuning and tweaking a few things.

Am not sure this is what Erica had in mind but when asked what the artists are famous for (possibly their most famous painting?) for my girls come up with some different responses which amuse me. The above is Agent Smelly's response to what Van Gogh was famous for.

This is what Picasso is famous for apparently ... and when you think about it they are probably right. Incidentally both girls had the same answers for both.


We end our study on a particular painter by painting something, whatever they like, in the manner of that artist. They have to think how he or she would think and create that particular picture.


It has been a great study. They sit and go through their own wee books aswell as Mikes and have retained the information on the paintings too. They also like to get on the web and look at further of the artists pictures. They even get excited when they recognise a comment on TV about an artist they recognise, or when we are out and they recognise a piece of work. They even ask sometimes if a certain piece they see could be a "Picasso" or "Monet" etc. Actually I get a little excited when they do that too ... 


Check out confessionsofahomeschooler.com for further info on this unit study, it's under printables.