We are off to a great start in the new year. The very first week, which we didn't officially count, was used to catch up and get back in the rhythm. The "real" first week back we had company five of the five days, during which we attempted to get some work done, but Disneyland ate up the entirety of one of them. So last week we really had to hit the ground running and get down to it. Kids are just like adults - Monday mornings are hard, and getting back to longer days feels nearly painful after so many weeks of advent and vacation and guests. It helped that we had some fun projects to occupy hands while we were doing our many different read alouds.
In history, we have said goodbye to Rome and the Barbarians, and entered into the Middle Ages. Welcome Vikings! I remember learning very little about them in school - largely that they were big, smelly and bad; that they were a seafaring and pillaging lot; that they sailed across the sea and discovered Iceland. So it is an educational joy to me to read chapters after chapters about them to the kids - to discover connections between the Vikings and the English, the Vikings and Normandy, the Vikings and the Eastern Coast of Canada. Our main history spine book has an activity book to go along with it, and while much of it (coloring pages and such) are of little interest, sometimes a project, like building a real viking ship! jumps out and everyone wants to participate. These paper viking ships were colored, cut and built while I was reading chapters about viking adventures. Even Sage had to join in the fun, though she was busy playing when the time for the great photo came about (ah, the joys of being five and in Kindergarten!)
Another part of this time period in history is learning about the roles of the monks and monasteries in preserving education, the written word, and the Word. As a special project, both kids chose their favorite Psalm to turn into an Illuminated Manuscript. These totally reveal each one's personality:
Finally, we finished reading a literature/geography story, Tree in the Trail, and I asked the kids to create, on their own, a timeline of the Tree through the history of the story. First off, I love books that are truly able to do two things at once - be literature (a great story, well written) and be geography (full of details about the time and place) and even to add history into it. Second, I love watching the process as the kids do something "creative." Sterling agonizes over creative ventures, and it was only with some patient (and not, honestly) counsel that he was able to pull himself together and create a scene by scene diagram of the book, all created using playmobil (that buffalo from his set at Christmas came in mighty handy). Siena, on the other hand, had a harder time narrowing down all the possible options into one. Finally, she grabbed some ribbon paper and began a through scroll through the time of the tree, with carefully draw pictures and statements:
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