DIY Spartan Armor from Duct Tape, Paper Bags, and Cardboard

We've been studying the city-states of Ancient Greece, and while I agree more with Athens, come on. Who doesn't actually love Sparta the best?

Well, I should really call it Λακεδαίμων,  because I'm trying to get my Greek phonics up to speed, but Sparta is what we've learned to call it, so let's go with that.

The kids and I read and studied the chapters in Story of the World volume 1 about Athens vs. Sparta and the Greco-Persian Wars. I'm hoping to get through the Peloponnesian War next week. Story of the World isn't a complete curriculum for the older child, of course, but it is an excellent spine, easy to look at and say, "Okay, this chapter is the Greco-Persian Wars, so let me find some more great resources and activities to give that more depth and context."

We found some websites and online videos--

• BBC Ancient Greece: The Greeks at War--has more information on Sparta, the Greco-Persian Wars, and the Peloponnesian War
• British Museum Battle of Salamis Game--you're on a trireme, ramming the other ships.
• Battle of Marathon timeline--this is a GREAT resource for understanding the Battle of Marathon
• Ancient Greece: Persian Wars--an easy-to-read history of the Greco-Persian War
• TED-Ed Lesson: What Did Democracy Really Mean in Athens?--Watch the video and do the reading and follow the links.

--and read and watched some resources from the library--

While Syd was away at a slumber party, Matt and I even ordered pizza and let Will watch 300 with us. It's VERY violent, but the military reenactments are okay--you can see what a phalanx is, although in your head you have to imagine the soldiers as more rangy than ripped. We showed Syd just the iconic "This is Sparta!" scene, because it's in Story of the World, as well.

Our big project for this unit, however, was to make some Spartan armor. I saved some large pieces of cardboard from the box that my new treadmill (yay!) came in, and bought some gold duct tape. To that we added brown paper bags from the grocery store, a couple of Sharpies, scissors, and gold paint.

For the helmet, we followed the suggestions from this tutorial, using gold duct tape to make the helmet bronze, though, and of course my older kids were able to cut out their own helmets themselves:



I showed the kids (yet again, sigh...) how to use string and a pushpin to make a compass for circle drawing, and then the kids made their shields out of cardboard--shields three feet in diameter!!!

The most authentic Spartan shield embellishment would be a giant lambda, but even the Spartans at one point got to design their own shield embellishments, so those hand-me down shields would still have been seen at any battle, and why on earth would I deprive my younger child of the chance to fight with a unicorn on her shield?



We also didn't put on the horsehair crest--it was in vogue for a while, but not always, and the kids didn't really want to add anything else to their helmets.

Besides, don't you think that Syd is fierce enough without it?



We'll be too far north on our travels to see the location of Ancient Sparta, but we ARE going to drive right through modern Thermopylae!

Work Plans for the Week of November 3, 2014: Back to Work

The kids had a fabulous time on their vacation to California! Their grandparents took them to museums, and beaches, and tide pools, and LegoLand! In fact, their vacation was so educational (they're full of facts about tar pits now, and King Tut, and model trains), that I feel perfectly justified in giving them the first two days of this week off to unpack and get back into the groove.

I also signed Will up for a Minecraft Homeschool class whose orientation technically started last week, so she'll be having some extra time on the computer to complete her orientation lesson and get used to their map before she starts the class in earnest on Wednesday.

Playdates and classes and volunteer work will get the kids back into the swing of the school schedule, and we'll start our school week on Wednesday.

WEDNESDAY: I actually don't remember where the children have left off in their Math Mammoth curricula (gasp, I know!), so I'll have to get them to show me. It's somewhere in the time telling unit for Syd and the endless division unit for Will, though, so I'm not too lost.

Will is beginning her Minecraft Homeschool class on this day, and I'm not yet sure how much time it will take, so I've given it just the one school slot this week. Syd will be reading a biography of Florence Nightengale, as part of the kids' Girl Scout First Aid badge for both Brownies and Juniors--we're studying first aid through the lens of its professionals, since there are so many interesting people to learn about who work in the areas of medicine and civic safety.

Mostly on this day, though, there will be loads of clubs and classes! The kids are taking a class on wildcraft and medicinal herbs as part of our Girl Scout Co-op, they'll be attending their monthly online Magic Tree House Club meeting, and also attending their monthly LEGO Club meeting--their creations from the club meeting are displayed in the public library children's department all month, and this is thrilling for them.

THURSDAY: I've neglected music for a long, long time, but back when I was teaching it regularly, Syd loved the Hoffman Academy online piano lessons so much that I bought the written work that goes with it, and I'll be using it with both kids.

Song School Spanish will bring more Spanish vocabulary into our lives!

The kids (and I! I don't love ice skating, but I hate sitting on my butt more) have an ice skating date with our homeschool group on this afternoon, and we're also going to attend the dress rehearsal of the play "Pride and Prejudice" on this evening. I'm not sure if they'll actually like the graphic novel version enough to read it through, but I've also got an excellent infographic of the plot that they can look at, just so they know what's going on in the play.

FRIDAY: The AMC 8 problems that I'll be showing the kids today are one that requires a knowledge of mean and median (I'll have to show them that, as well, as they haven't encountered it before), and one that makes clever use of Pascal's triangle. The kids HAVE done Pascal's triangles before, so that one should be easy enough--more time to learn about mean and median!

Another option for math on this day is for the kids to re-enroll in their favorite math class, which is back to a time and day that we can make! I'd forgotten about that when I made these lesson plans, so I suppose I'll just present both options to the kids and see which they'd prefer.

Gee... I wonder?

The kids will also have to show me where we are in First Language Lessons. I was pleased to hear that during their plane ride, playing Mad Libs with the little guy sitting next to them, my kids "taught" him the parts of speech. I imagine that most of this involved a child reciting by rote, in monotone, definitions like "an adverb describes a verb, adjective, or other adverb" with little understanding of what she was saying, but still--it beats not having a definition for adverbs at all!

The kids might be interested in a more extensive unit on endangered and extinct animals, or this might be a one-off, but nevertheless, I know that Will loves origami, so when I came across this little lesson and origami passenger pigeon project, I immediately figured out a way to work it into the schedule.

I've also got the kids writing thank-you notes to the firefighters who led our fire station field trip; I'll ask the kids to include the new information that they learned on the trip, so it'll be a good culmination activity, as well. I've got some photos to print for them, and the kids will bake them some healthy muffins, and then we'll bring it all by to them on the weekend!

SATURDAY: Again, our weekend is ridiculously busy. Syd still has ballet twice on Saturdays--once for her class, and a second hour-long rehearsal for The Nutcracker in the afternoons--and Will is beginning her own two-hour rehearsals on Saturdays this week--she's preparing for an aerial silks performance! After Syd's afternoon rehearsal, we'll be driving up to Battle Ground, Indiana, for an evening program at Wolf Park (howling with the wolves!) and a visit to the battle ground and Prophetstown. I am a MAJOR Tecumseh fangirl, and I am SUPER excited. The kids don't know a ton about Tecumseh--it's just a sad period of history, you know?--but we've got The Story of the World chapters on him to listen to on the way there, and then I'll flesh the story out more for them as we walk around.

Sunday brings chess club for Will, maybe a hike for all of us (we've been working on cleaning up the giant 1960s-era dump at the very back of our woods, sigh), and plenty of time for board games, books, and play.

And probably more howling. I think that Wolf Park program is going to be FUN!

Work Plans for the Week of March 24, 2014: Play

Syd spent much of last week learning how to make and break codes and edit Zoo Tycoon with Will, so whatever we didn't get to last week, I just left in place for this week!

MONDAY: Latin is one of the subjects that Will always chooses to do with Syd--somehow, those workbook pages that were such agony when required don't merit a peep of protest when they're chosen. Syd's keyboard lesson is again from Hoffman Academy, who, I am thrilled to see, has added more video lessons. I'm pretty stoked that we can learn more at home before I have to make a decision about formal classes. Syd also ADORES Mr. Hoffman and his lessons, so she loves keyboard. Will, on the other hand, hasn't picked up the recorder since the day that I stopped giving her work plans; we need to have a conversation about this, to see where she wants to go with music, because I do want her to study some instrument.

We didn't get to the skip counting board last Friday (but Syd did spend a LONG time creating and translating "secret" codes on that day, so there's her math enrichment and logic skill building), so I put it down again for Monday. I also read another Pippi book to Syd, and then had her write a letter to Pippi Longstocking, care of the theater where we saw her play a couple of weeks ago. Syd LOVED this project, and it turned out super cute, too--she asked Pippi what her real name was, told her all the things that she liked to pretend to be, described in detail her favorite part of the play (a scene that didn't actually include Pippi--oops!), and wrote the names of our three cats in every possible order for her ("My cats' names are Ballantine and Gracie and Spots or Ballantine and Spots and Gracie or Gracie and Ballantine and Spots or...). I'm curious to see if the theater passes the letter on to the actress and if she writes back--hopefully she's not *too* overwhelmed with fan mail?

Both kids also seriously worked their butts off at our volunteer gig on Monday--I have NEVER seen them work so hard! They stocked cans and granola bars and frozen meat and milk and yogurt and produce, including a ton of really heavy stuff. They helped repackage pasta (some stuff comes in giant bulk bags, and we split it into smaller portions to serve more people). They organized their bookshelf and stocked more books (someone brought in even more books last week!). Syd read to a little boy. They normally do all that, but with plenty of time spent reading quietly or coloring or playing together, but yesterday they hardly even took a break. It was wonderful to watch them so dedicated and focused, and I felt really proud of them.

TUESDAY: The kids have a playdate for this entire morning (right now they're playing hide-and-seek downstairs, with a gentleman's agreement that no one will hide in the closet where we keep the litterbox), so nothing will get accomplished until afternoon, but then we've got First Language Lessons, which both kids LOVE, and math, which Syd is fine with and Will tolerates much better these days (even though she IS spending the week doing the long-threatened Kumon multiplication drill workbook), and that documentary on natural Indiana that's been on the work plans for weeks--surprising, since the kids usually adore documentaries, and I actually want to add more of them to our days, but they've been so involved in active play and their own busy plans recently that I just don't think they want to sit down long enough to watch this. It's also snowing right now, which means that we're not going to make casts of animal tracks today, either, but on a family hike this weekend--without the supplies to make casts, of COURSE--we saw some good animal tracks, so on the first nice day this week we'll head back there, plaster of Paris in our backpacks, and finally make that project happen.

One thing that I like about homeschooling is that I get to put what are essentially chores on the schoolwork plans, instead of rushing to try to do them after school and extracurriculars, so today I also want the kids to figure out their birthday presents for a buddy's birthday party this weekend. I have kind of strict rules for birthday party presents--You can either make your friend a gift, buy your friend a gift with your own money, or give your friend something of your own--so making/buying/figuring out what to sacrifice does take enough time and effort to justify being a "work" for the day.

WEDNESDAY: Horseback riding lessons begin again! The kids couldn't be more stoked. I also *may* put Will back in aerial silks class, because she says her thumb isn't sore anymore, but I'm terrified that she'll accidentally rip off a big scab or her entire thumbnail during class and cause an "incident," so we'll see...

THURSDAY: Oh, my goodness, this last Girl Scout Birthday Week project seems like it will never get done! I may have to wave the Birthday Week patches temptingly in front of the children on this day, because I know they want them deeply. To be fair, Will worked on other Girl Scout badges for I can't even tell you how many hours last week--she's simultaneously earning her Animal Tracks, Detective, Inside Government, and Geocaching badges--and Syd worked on her Potter badge, so Girl Scouts is still leading them into some really enriching, engaging learning experiences, but I know that regular sense of completion and accomplishment goes a long way towards making it as fun as they find it to be.

Since we just had a Bible chapter in The Story of the World, and since Easter and Passover are coming up, I thought we'd spend some time in the next few weeks exploring some myths from world religions. We're reading about Creation myths this week, and then we might focus in on Jewish and Christian myths related to the upcoming holidays. I'll tell you one thing about children's religious education: it includes a LOT of crafts! Fortunately, Syd enjoys crafting, so I think this will be a lot of fun for her. Will doesn't always enjoy crafting, so I think she'll appreciate the ability to choose her own level of participation.

FRIDAY: Last Friday was a beautiful day, so the kids just played and played and we didn't get much of our formal schoolwork accomplished. This Friday may end up being just as beautiful, especially after being so chilly earlier in the week, so we'll just see what ends up getting done. I'd like us to begin Indiana history, after spending some time studying natural Indiana, so we're starting A History of US, which I'm pretty excited about. I "think" I'm going to skip around to the chapters that relate directly to Indiana, but if we like the book as much as I hope we're going to, I may just add it wholemeal to our curriculum. Anyway, on this day we begin with the Bering Land Bridge, and we'll be using a cool ipad app that allows us to see historical geography to research what the Bering Land Bridge actually must have looked like.

For our regular history, we'll be doing the mapwork in The Story of the World Activity Book for chapter seven, but we've actually spent so much time exploring Mesopotamia in earlier chapters that I'm already researching for chapter eight. Perhaps this is how we'll eventually begin to move faster through the book--we'll just, at some point, have done all the cool projects that there are to do! Math class is back this week, and the couple of leftover assignments from last Friday should finish off our day... if I can get the kids to come inside long enough to do them, which I'm not counting on.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: It's going to be a busy Saturday, with an all-day nature class for the kids followed immediately by a birthday party for a buddy. So even though I'd like to plan hiking or rock climbing or some such family adventure on Sunday, we may just goof around and play at home, with a few breaks for enforced yardwork.

Work Plans for the Week of March 17: Wild

Will's week of free schooling actually worked out wonderfully, with but a few reservations, the most important of which being her two-day tantrum when she realized bright and early on Saturday morning that the five days of math that I had been telling her would not complete themselves did not, in fact, complete themselves.

So that sucked, but the ordeal did prompt Will to ask me to remind her about her math as soon as I got up each morning so that she could do it. This morning I got up, reminded Will about her math, and glory be, she sat down and did it. Here's to four more days of that!

Will also did choose to join in on almost all of Syd's activities last week, playing multiplication games with us, taking her drawing lesson, listening to Story of the World and Pippi Longstocking, helping celebrate Girl Scout Week, etc. In turn, Syd joined in with much of Will's work--Will taught both herself and Syd how to geocache! They did that a LOT last week, and rode bikes, and played basketball, and worked on the bookshelf that they built for the food pantry where we volunteer. It was a busy and productive, happy and engaging week, and so I didn't stress when Syd and I didn't complete some assignments on her work plans--I just kept them on for this week!

MONDAY: One of my favorite podcasts, "A Way with Words," included a segment in a recent episode on the Pope's Latin tweets, so for Latin today we listened to that podcast while coloring, then looked at the tweets in Latin. Will spent much of the morning searching Zoo Tycoon forums and trying to figure out how to download and install user-created content (could this be her gateway into computer programming?), and we had a happy and useful shift at our volunteer gig, with the kids installing their bookshelf and setting up the book donations we solicited.

Currently, we're on our lunch break, during which the kids are being bottomless pits of bread and apples and oatmeal and cereal with milk, and then Syd and I (I'm betting Will won't be interested in this) are going to make a village of these cute multiplication houses, have a keyboard lesson, and write a letter to Pippi Longstocking, whose book we read AND whose play we saw last week:

I gave the kids Pippi hair before the play.

TUESDAY: We didn't get around to making the fossil casts on the couple of nice days last week, so I hope that we can do it this week. I want to take a nature hike and find real animal tracks to cast, and Will wants to organize a multi-cache geocache adventure--can we meet both of our goals at once? Time will tell.

The kids also didn't finish their Girl Scout Week activities last week (We did the movie marathon, comparing the animation of the first Toy Story to the later ones, and made cake and ice cream from scratch together, but missed most of the other required tasks), but they want that patch, so they agreed to make them up this week. We also didn't get the birdwatching session done, although we did learn to identify the black capped chickadee, but the birdfeeders around our property badly need a refill, so hopefully that will make the cut this week.

Both kids LOVE First Language Lessons. We did last week's lesson at the park; I wonder where we'll do this week's?

WEDNESDAY: We're in between horseback riding sessions, and Will crushed her thumb when a rock wall at the park partially collapsed on her, so she's out of aerial silks classes for a bit. That makes this day happily free, other than the Magic Tree House Club meeting which we MUST attend, since it's the last one of the month.

THURSDAY: The kids have a wildlife program at the library on this day--I hope they'll have some completed animal track casts to share! The nanosecond project is leftover from last week, although the pottery book is new. Math Mammoth is tooling right along--Syd's working on measurement this week, and Will's working through the last bit of multiplication that she can do before I sit her down next week and make her finish memorizing the multiplication table.

And I mean business this time. I printed out flash cards!

FRIDAY: Last Friday, we only completed math, history, and art, so those are the only new assignments here. Math class is on sabbatical for the week, so I'm looking forward to this extra hands-on math day to make something with Syd that I've been wanting for years--a skip counting board!

I did decide to just move on from the Bible story chapter in The Story of the World, so now we're onto Hammurabi. I don't know how long we'll stay here, either, since the kids already know him well--last Friday, over dinner, Will went into this long rant about Hammurabi and the whole "eye for an eye" business; she's convinced that a good judicial system has a much more nuanced system of justice than that. But this week, at least, we'll take another listen and do the quiz questions; if nothing else, we can at least do the map work on this one next week before moving on.

Drawing With Children should be fun this week; we're meant to look through magazines and catalogues and begin to develop a collection of images and graphics to copy and embellish to create our own art.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: I want to take a day trip to the Indianapolis Museum of Art, although we might do a fossils workshop at one of the local state parks, instead. Will has chess club. I have some shopping to do. And wouldn't it be nice to get started with the spring planting!

Work Plans for the Week of March 10, 2014: Sydney School

Just as we finally hashed out in our Family Meeting on Sunday, this week I only wrote lesson plans for Syd. Will has a math packet with a full five days of math, and she is welcome to join in with whatever lessons Syd and I are doing, but otherwise she has no requirements beyond our everyday outside activities and chores.

Will has always regularly protested her schoolwork, no matter how much I change my methods to suit her. And considering that this is a kid who reads nearly constantly, who watches documentaries for fun, who, for computer time, usually chooses something from my Educational Links page, and who is a precocious, quick learner, I'm willing to try out letting her manage her own education, to an extent. Syd, on the other hand, has no limit to her capacity for soaking in my attention, and thrives with my lessons and hands-on activities.

If this week is a success, I would like to put a little more structure into Will's studies, such as giving her book lists on specific subjects, having her write summaries of the books that she reads, guiding her to regularly write those research reports that I'm so fond of, and to complete the odd project. I also expect her to join in with most of the lessons that I do with Syd, knowing that quite a bit of her pig-headedness Independent Thinker with Leadership Potential-ness has to do with her automatic rejection of anything that anyone in authority would like her to do, and being invited and welcomed is a whole different animal from being required.

So with that preface, here's what Syd and I (and sometimes Will) are up to this week:

MONDAY: This is Birthday Week for the Girl Scouts, with Wednesday marking the organization's 102nd anniversary. Every day includes a special activity that a girl can complete in order to earn the Birthday Week patch. In our council, most of these activities this year focus on computers and animation--an odd focus, if you ask me, but we've got to sneak in those STEM skills, I guess! Yesterday, both Syd and Will worked for over an hour on that day's activity, that of creating a Google Doodle for the Doodle4Google contest. I can't help but add that Will was focused on her work and thoughtful with her design, simply after being invited to work with me and Syd. If I'd required it, there's the strong chance that she would have thrown a fit, then put in the minimum amount of effort required to meet my most minimal standards.

Syd worked on her keyboard lessons, we spent a furiously busy two hours at our weekly volunteer gig (some of the other volunteers didn't show up, so I was run off my feet--yay for good healthy activity!), there was a multiplication game and a Latin unit, and just like that, fuss-free, the kids were able to spend the rest of the day in play, and the day was actually nice enough that we could all head to the park after dinner, the kids to run around like maniacs (the wall that partly fell on Will yesterday, crushing her thumb, was now completely fallen down. I felt sick when I saw it, and wished that I'd had Matt pull it down in the first place; it could DEFINITELY have killed a kid) and Matt and I to unashamedly play bad basketball on the courts.

TUESDAY: We're eating apple pie oatmeal and leftover quiche right now, listening to "Morning Edition" while Will plays Minecraft on the computer, but in exactly three minutes, Syd and I are going to work through her Math Mammoth packet, read Pippi Longstocking out loud together, complete her next grammar unit, and get ready for a season full of bird watching (I plan to use my salary from last month for Indiana and US guidebooks for plants and animals--we're going to be naturalists this year!). I bet the kids will get into a big fight while learning how to play Pong together, but it's also another gorgeous day for playing outside, and later this afternoon Matt is taking them and a couple of their friends to something called a Girl Scout Songfest.

WEDNESDAY: I'm already worried about this horseback riding class that can't be rescheduled--Will's thumb is still awfully gory and swollen--but that's something that her instructors are just going to have to figure out. We're also going to watch a children's theatre production of Pippi Longstocking, and Syd's going to read Stage Fright on a Summer Night--all by herself!--so that both kids can attend Magic Tree House Club that afternoon.

We are also, although I haven't told the children this on account of I do not want them hysterical with excitement all freakin' day, going to make cake and ice cream from scratch in order to celebrate the 102nd anniversary of the Girl Scouts.

THURSDAY: I'd like to go on a nature walk and find animal tracks to make our plaster of Paris casts from, but it's supposed to snow again on Wednesday, so if all else fails, there's always clay and cats and seashells. There's an excellent, kid-friendly pottery book that we're going to look through together as part of Syd's Potter badge, and then there's an interesting nanosecond project to complete.

And if it *doesn't* snow, maybe our homeschool group will be able to have our first Park Day of the year. I will be SO happy to get out of that dang gymnasium!

Friday: We'll be doing some natural history of Indiana, before we starting learning about the Native Americans. There's a great video to watch, and those guidebooks that I'm going to purchase, and we'll have the whole weekend for our nice, long nature hike.

I finally decided that we'll listen to the Bible chapter of SOTW, and do the mapwork, and color in a Bible coloring book to get a little better of a handle on the stories. I've also made a mental note to introduce some interesting stories from other religions at a later time.

The kids' drawing skills have been improving just a ton lately, so I'm excited for us to do the next lesson in Drawing With Children, and a word ladder should quickly finish up the day with a little logical thinking.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: I think I will send the kids to that drop-in pottery class this weekend--Syd's Potter badge isn't going to earn itself!--and we have a giant, three-movie Toy Story marathon to enjoy to round off Girl Scout Birthday Week. We might go rock climbing. We might take another hike. We need to build a better gate into the chicken yard. We need to have a Family Meeting to figure out if we're going to buy those couple of Easter Egger chicks that Will wants.

AND, speaking of Family Meetings, we'll need to see if Will's school week went well, or if it's back to the drawing board for that.

Work Plans for the Week of March 3: Latin and Libraries

I'm pretty well over the way that the Box widget that embeds my work plans always insists on scrolling immediately to them when my blog loads, and the way that Box has completely ignored my question about this, so at some point I'm going to have to make the time to research other document embedding systems, sigh. Until then, however...

MONDAY: While the local schoolchildren are suffering through yet another snow day here, it's business as usual for us--it looks like even our local volunteer gig will be open today, so add "De-ice the car" to my to-do list! Syd's working on her factor chart (I got the idea from an old elementary Montessori manual--I'll tell you about it another time, if it turns out well) right now, while Will, who's finished part of her reading work, is heating up some French bread for our breakfast.

We've got chapter 19 of Song School Latin today (more body parts), instrument lessons--and I am REALLY going to have to kick their butts on these, because it's been a while since they've really focused on regular practice--and we'll be able to spend a few weeks doing some regular creative writing, since our local PBS station finally got their butts in gear about the PBS Kids Writers Contest.

TUESDAY: The kids have both Math Mammoth and First Language Lessons today, which I always appreciate during lesson planning since they're so blessedly easy to schedule. A playdate and baking a king cake to celebrate Mardi Gras will use up most of the rest of the day, but we'll also be working on the kids' Girl Scout service project. They need to provide a bookshelf as part of this project, and at first I thought that we might get it donated, but the dimensions required are pretty specific to fit into a limited space, AND Will has expressed so much interest in woodworking lately, that I've finally decided that we'll just make the bookshelf. It's still a little cold for woodwork outdoors, so we may find ourselves with lumber, the portable work bench, and the circular saw in the living room, but I think it's going to be a great beginning woodworking project for the kids, and one that they're guaranteed to see in use every week at our regular volunteer gig.

WEDNESDAY: Will's big Spring Ice Show performance is this night--wish her luck!

THURSDAY: We've still got a couple of chemistry experiments centered on acids and bases to perform, but I didn't get around to getting all the materials for those yet, so I'm moving us on to the paleontology that we'll be studying off and on as we lead up to our dinosaur dig this summer. I imagine that we'll be interspersing this paleontology study with seasonal studies, like botany and animal biology, and kid-led interests, but for now, I'll be grounding the kids' understanding, and sneaking in a little more Latin!

I think the kids are also ready to start interspersing Drawing With Children lessons with other types of hands-on art, so we'll be trying out this copy of The Color Book that I was sent to review (ooh, I just saw that it hasn't been officially released yet--how fun to have it in our paint-covered little hands!)--it's focused on exploring color through a variety of activities, so it should be a fun integration into our week.

FRIDAY: We're soundly into our Indiana study, but I wasn't quite prepared to move into the next chapter of The Story of the World (nor am I quite sure, yet, how I'm going to handle that chapter, since it highlights one of the book's few flaws, Bible stories treated as history--we may end up just listening to the chapter one week and then moving on, but first I need a little more time to decide if there's anything really historically relevant there), so fortunately, there's ALWAYS something more to do with Ancient Egypt!

The kids get in moods in which they seem to forget about formerly favorite pastimes, sometimes, so this week's logic is a board game of each kid's choice, to remind them that they like to play board games! That, combined with a library program, should round out our school week on a VERY fun note.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: We might go to the Indianapolis Museum of Art as a family, or we might send the kids to a pottery class and claim some grown-up time. We might go hiking, if the weather warms, or we might drag the bikes out and get them ready for a season of riding. We *might* order a couple more chicks from a local hatchery, although every time you ask me that one, my answer changes.

Homeschool History: Make a Sarcophagus

Creating a model sarcophagus is an excellent enrichment activity to add to an Ancient Egypt study, and it fits in well with chapter four of The Story of the World: Ancient Times, the chapter on Ancient Egypt that includes information about mummies and pyramids.

I found little cardboard... pencil boxes?... on clearance one day in one of the big box arts/crafts stores that I frequent as little as possible due to my tendency to buy things on clearance that I don't need and probably won't use for years, and kept them on a shelf in the study/studio for, yes, years before realizing that they were the perfect material for this craft. Can a time lag of three years still be described as serendipity?

Any little box that's longer than it is wide will work for this craft, however, whether it's cardboard or wooden--I don't think plastic would work well, but you can make your own cardboard box that's the exact size that you want. For a very miniature sarcophagus, you could even make a matchbox work, and that would be super cute!

Before the kids began their own sarcophogi, we researched a bit and did a Google Image search in order to study examples. Based on that, we talked about having a facial portrait on the sarcophagus, including decorative elements and patterns, drawing symbols or representations of the meaningful gods, and recording important scenes from their lives. We also talked about the importance of the sarcophagus being their best work, and thoughtful, and including a lot of details and creative embellishments. I introduced the idea that artists often create sketches or rough drafts of their work before they begin the piece itself, and to that end I gave them these sarcophagus design sheets and asked them to create a draft of their piece first. Will fussed at this, of course, because she hadn't focused yet and thus didn't feel invested in the project, and actually tried to scribble her sarcophagus out as fast as possible on the cardboard box, but I erased her work, done quickly and shabbily to try to make a point, and required her to do her design sheet first. 

While working on her design sheet, she finally focused and found herself invested in her work, and worked hard and happily until she finished:

Seriously, though--school in Cinderella pajamas? That kid doesn't understand how good she's got it.

The kids copied their designs onto the cardboard sarcophogi in pencil--I reminded them to be mindful of the scale, but that's a concept we clearly need to keep working on, since both of their drawings ended up pretty small--colored them with Prismacolor and Sharpie markers, and, since their designs left extra room, I had them each research and write the cartouche for their names on the boxes, as well:

I actually think that I will have the kids use these sarcophagi as pencil boxes, and if this alone serves to stop their bickering over who stole whose pencil, then it will be three bucks well spent. This does bring to mind, though, my favorite thing to do with a kid's finished project--use it! For us, at least, a project used or displayed is a project that brings greater overall enjoyment, and a project that eventually gets worn out or messed up in some way, and therefore a project that eventually gets thrown away, guilt-free. Guilt-free de-acquisition? YAY!!!

Possible extension activities for this project:

• Sarcophogi were sometimes decorated on the inside, as well (in the Rosicrucian Museum in San Jose, we saw a sarcophogus made by a coffin maker for his daughter. On the inside, he'd written all the information from The Book of the Dead that his daughter would need for her journey--a beautiful relic of his last act of service to his beloved child), so you could also decorate the inside of your sarcophogus, perhaps even with hieroglyphics.
• You could create a mummy to live inside the sarcophogus. Some homeschoolers have symbolically mummified Barbie, and I don't think that's such a bad fate for her.
• A matchbox sarcophagus could be entombed inside a model pyramid.

This project is shared with the After School Link Party over at Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational.

Story of the World Map Work

I feel like we have to listen to each chapter of Story of the World a few times before everyone has really mastered all of the information. One of the many nice things about our audio version of Story of the World is that this repetition is painless--simply find some busywork, press play, and have a seat! Usually the busywork consists of coloring pages related to the chapter; these have the added benefit of encouraging even more content mastery later, since the girls usually show Matt their pictures later, and he'll ask them questions about it. For instance, this morning we got to tell him the story of Set and Osiris and the coffin, as he admired a picture that Syd had colored of a scene from that story.

So usually each Story of the World chapter goes like this:

• WEEK ONE: Listen to the chapter (and a couple of later ones) as the girls color, then introduce the quiz questions. I copy these onto index cards and they become part of our history memory work forever.
• WEEK TWO: Listen to the chapter as the girls color, then do the chapter's map work.
• WEEK THREE: Listen to the chapter as the girls color, then add in the new timeline cards. These timeline card are switched off and on with the quiz questions for history memory work.
• WEEKS FOUR UNTIL WE MOVE ON: Watch a documentary or read a non-fiction or living history book, then do a hands-on enrichment activity centered on the chapter's content.

This past week, it was map work day for our chapter, so the girls colored, and then we got out the Prismacolors, photocopied the map, pulled up Google Earth on the computer, found the globe, and got to work!

I like to arrange Google Earth so that what you see on the screen is almost exactly what the paper map shows, and then when we discuss the placement of various items on the paper map, I can zoom Google Earth in to look at the real item, such as the Sphinx or the Nile Delta or the mountains of Upper Egypt, close-up.

I also like context, and a lot of it, so much of our conversation goes like, "The geographic area of Sumer is called Iraq now. Iraq was who the US fought against in the Persian Gulf War. Right, there's the Persian Gulf! Your Uncle Dickie fought in that war. He worked with these crazy-looking planes called AWACs. Want to see what they looked like?" etc., etc.

Also good for context? A great big globe!

There are some more involved map projects that we also like, and that we've done already for Egypt--the salt dough maps of Egypt turned out great, but NOTHING beats a cookie map!

I might actually consider doing that cookie map again, because we last did it a while ago, but yesterday we JUST made cake clocks.

There's only so much deliciousness that one school week can handle!

Work Plans for the Week of October 28, 2013

Our break was good for mind and soul, but I'm also very happy to be back in business. We've got so many exciting things to learn and do and see and explore!

Here are Syd's work plans for the week.
Here are Will's work plans for the week.

MONDAY: I'm trying out a new method of getting the memory work practiced regularly. It's a learning curve, though, since Will and Syd both found the concept of checking off the correct assignment on the correct day on this chart absolutely baffling at first. It's funny what random things kids don't know!

I'm trying to strike a balance between hands-on math and computation skills, so both girls are testing out a different pattern blocks skills book today (I didn't like the one we tested the other week, sigh). I'm also trying to incorporate more living books and movies into our days, since the girls always seem to remember that content so well, so I'm adding that to subjects throughout the week whenever it seems relevant. I've been downloading videos from Discovery Education Streaming and creating themed DVDs for various units--the recorder, Ancient Egypt, our 50 states study, etc.--and this makes having the kids access those videos a LOT more handy!

You might notice that Syd no longer has Reading as a daily subject! She's at about a Level 2 reader, so instead of making it a curriculum subject, I'm including in her other daily subjects something that she can read to me, and something that I can read to her.

In Latin we've moved on to commands, and in music Will is still reviewing some of her recorder songs that she forgot over our hiatus from the instrument, while I'm trying out having Syd, who has no interest in learning an instrument but who does enjoy singing, learn and practice a song this week.

TUESDAY: Over the weekend, we went to the Physics, Geology, and Chemistry open houses on campus--always a BIG hit!!!--and so I wasn't super surprised when Will said that she'd rather study chemistry now than continue with human biology. We hadn't gone far into human biology, fortunately, and have finished our animal biology unit, AND own a really nice chemistry set that comes with a series of graduated experiments and demonstrations, so I'm actually pretty excited to make the shift. It will release me from a TON of prep work, too!

I've still got Craft as a subject for Tuesdays, since it's great for fine motor and problem solving skills, and although Syd's pretty crafty in her free time, Will rarely chooses such activities. I've still got Will doing some grammar, too--although my long-term plan is to put her into the third level of First Language Lessons with Syd later this year, Will already has such an excellent inherent grasp of English grammar that it's easy for her to memorize parts of speech.

We have to remember to bring gloves to horseback riding this week. It's getting cold!!!

WEDNESDAY: I've given up on "fun school," keeping just memory work and the math packet in what's otherwise a free day. We've gotten out of the habit of doing big day trips during the week, but aerial silks, our usual Wednesday activity, is actually easy to shift to another day, so there might be a field trip renaissance in our future. First up: the girls are making noise about visiting the Children's Museum of Indianapolis' Haunted House. Do we dare?

THURSDAY: Yes, I really did schedule a full day's work on Halloween. What was I thinking? Actually, it may storm on Halloween, so it's a good thing that we did all those trick-or-treating events and parties all weekend, even though they made me miserable. Otherwise, the girls are continuing their special units, with Syd making more raisin bread (I'm trying to choose recipes that she can potentially memorize, and definitely master) and Will working more on a real-live working pinball game. I bought a clock kit, and I'm really excited to set them up with the supplies to make their own clock--you can't not know how to tell time after doing THAT!--and there will also be our homeschool group's play group, perhaps ice skating with friends, perhaps dinner with friends, perhaps trick-or-treating with friends...

It can't REALLY storm on Halloween, right?!?

FRIDAY: Math with Math Mammoth is still going great. Will's still zipping through the cumulative reviews, stopping occasionally to complete the odd unit, but Syd's found a good place to settle midway through the second grade level. She's still moving very quickly, though, so I won't be surprised if she eventually reaches the point where she can't complete a unit a day.

Scrapbooking our summer vacation is also a BIG hit. I'll share the girls' scrapbooks with you some other time, but they're having a ball gluing down photos and souvenirs and writing captions, and the scrapbooks are going to be lovely mementos for them when they're done. I'm curious to see if the papyrus paintings that we'll be doing for history will also turn out cute--it's the last project before we move on to the mummy chapter!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Oh, let's see... There's our university's homecoming parade. Evening activities at our local hands-on science museum. Read to a Dog at the library. A hockey skills workshop. Some work that needs to be done on the chicken coop. Maybe mountain biking?

I think we'll stay busy!

Recreating Ancient Sumerian Cuneiform in Clay

The kids have been excited about this project for a REALLY long while. I told them about it, but then made them burn through a few weeks of Story of the World review questions, map work, and timeline cards.

But finally, FINALLY the review questions were memorized, the maps were filled out and colored, and the timeline cards were glued to our big basement timeline. We'd seen documentaries and read books on cuneiform, and I'd received several nice jpegs of cuneiform artifacts in the British Museum's collection (including some of the actual Code of Hammurabi, so woot!), so when I dragged out the clay bin and printed some word and alphabet charts from Google, the kids were ready to dig right in.

I suggested that they could carve themselves the correct triangle-shaped stylus, but after looking through all our clay tools, the little kid tried out a screwdriver--

-- and then switched to a toothpick, and the big kid started right off with a toothpick. There's a nice awl in the clay tools that also would have worked, but I think the toothpicks fit their hands better and looked less intimidating to use.

On this particular day, I just wanted them to explore writing cuneiform on clay. The big kid tried several figures but got frustrated when they didn't turn out as she wanted, and ended up with just one, but the little kid really took off and ended up with several nice slabs of writing: 

They looked pretty well like the cuneiform characters, too!

I think we'll use these slabs for the experiment found in the Story of the World activity book, but on another day I'd like to set the activity up again, along with a cuneiform alphabet, and have the kids create their names as keepsakes.

We'll do that in a couple of months though, after our road trip, because we're going to see Gettysburg, and until then, we're officially Civil War buffs!

Here are some of the resources that we used to study cuneiform:

• The Lifeboat That Saved the World: a Mesopotamian myth retold by the Mesopotamia curator at the British Museum.
• Hands-on History Mesopotamia: we didn't do any of the hands-on projects this time, but this series always includes a ton.
• DK Eyewitness Mesopotamia: the kids love the graphics and the bite-sized bits of information.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Our Giant Cookie Map of Egypt

Chapter two of Story of the World discusses the geography of Ancient Egypt, as well as its gods and goddesses, so I wanted to do another map project, but we did salt dough maps of Egypt in 2011, and paper maps as part of The Story of the World Activity Book for chapter two just a couple of weeks ago.

We got into the habit of turning things into giant cookies way back with the Giant Cookie Solar System of 2010, and we've discovered, since then, that many, many, many things make EXCELLENT giant cookies.

Egypt, for instance? Turns out that it makes an EXCELLENT giant cookie.

We used this cut-out sugar cookie recipe for our dough, although I'll warn you that it needs to be more exact than the recipes that I usually use for kid cooking are. Syd accidentally poured in 1 cup of milk instead of 1/4 cup, and I futzed around to try to save the recipe any other way than quadrupling it, but in the end we actually had to dump it out and re-make it. Normally, I only give the kids recipes that are very forgiving for that exact reason, but this recipe DOES result in a great cut-out cookie, so there you go.

For the template, I printed this 2x2 Egypt map, which, when assembled and cut out, was the perfect size:

We printed and cut out the one-page map first, but it was way too small for a shared project, so I told the girls that if there was enough dough leftover, they could each make their own personal Egypt cookie and decorate it silly.

The dough, rolled out--

--and cut to shape with an x-acto knife--

--looks like this!

It's very important to roll it out and cut it over parchment paper; otherwise, I don't know how on earth you'd get the damn thing on the pan.

Obviously, you're never going to be able to figure out the baking time for this beforehand. I just keep an eye out, and even then there was no way not to burn the area of Egypt east of the Red Sea inlet, but otherwise the cookie was perfect about 20 minutes in. 

Decorating the cookie was a family affair, with the adults researching on computer and ipad, and the kids, with their messy fingers, calling out monuments to be researched, modeling them out of marzipan (other edible play dough would also work), icing, and M&Ms, and placing them on the map:

checking her work on Google Earth as she places the Nile

Setting M&Ms to follow the course of the Nile

Here's the finished masterpiece!

The Nile Delta is done in green icing and green M&Ms; modeled in marzipan are the Sphinx and the larger three pyramids of Giza (the three small ones are made from M&Ms alone):

The bent pyramid, the Valley of Kings, and the Tomb of Ramses II are also modeled in marzipan; modeled in marzipan and red M&Ms is the red pyramid:

And Syd made a valiant attempt to write "UPPER" in M&Ms and icing to label Upper Egypt.

 The great geographers are very proud of their work:

They're quite fond of how it tastes, as well:

I tidied away the excess dough, and on another day, the girls were ready and willing to make their own personal "silly Egypts":

I might personally think that they look a little less appetizing than the carefully constructed extra-large version-- 

--but the girls reported that they tasted just as yummy.