2008 Courageous Beings Year

Back in 2008 I did a program from Courageous Beings called an Epic Adventure.  The theme was Raiders of the Renaissance Minds.  We spent part of the year using this as part our curriculum.  The idea with this type of learning is that by doing a lot of hands-on and experiential lessons (Being Theres) the child forms lasting memories and learns the  material in a more meaningful way.  We had a lot of fun doing this program, but it was a lot of work and planning for me.  A few years later, I discovered Five In A Row which has some similarities as far as the hand-on and experiential component but because the books are of limited scope, it is easier to implement.  Here are the blogs from that time.

02/08/2008

Meet the Family

Hello
We live in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  We have 8 children.  Our oldest son is 20.  Our two oldest daughters are 17 & 15 and go to public high school.  I Home Schooled my oldest until 10th grade when he wanted to go to school.  His sisters followed  for high school.  But I think about pulling them out daily.  Next are 3 boys, 13, 11 & 7, that are Home Schooled.  Then a 5yo daughter and a baby boy that will be 2 in May.  My husband is a physicist and I am a biologist and chemist.  I no longer work and am home with the kids.  I love Home Schooling and it is how I define myself and my family.  Here is picture of the family, except me and oldest son, 700 feet below the surface of the earth in Carlsbad Caverns in December.  My two younger kids are really into being "Park Rangers" and going to National Parks.

Plodding along

Well, we are plodding along, behind schedule.  I am trying not to get too wrapped up in the schedule and enjoy what we are doing.  We have been plagued by illness, nothing too serious, but we are usually very healthy and it has slowed us down a bit because first one person gets something and then a few days later, someone else.  There also seems so be so much to do and I am trying not to feel compelled to do every single thing.  We had a great brain week.  I felt like the kids learned a lot and they really seemed to enjoy everything.  We added a few things of our own including doing life-size tracings of each kid that they drew their nervous system on.  I was amazed at what the kids learned, especially the younger ones.  
 
 Getting ready to dissect the brain!!  Husband Alex as Dr. Bonsai.

The kids with their neurons.

Tracing each other to make diagrams of the nervous system.

We then had a very busy time trying to get all the costumes finished.  The kids were very excited about this.  The surprise was the interest that my almost 14yo son took in all this.  All the kids helped sew their costumes, but Pierce was a huge help and became a "Master" at putting in grommets and sewing in general.  He really got into his costume and likes wearing it.  This was not something I expected from him.  He started making wallets, as he calls them, after he finished with costumes, and made them for everyone.

Pierce making wallets while dressed in most of his costume.

 I liked the idea that someone posted of having a medieval dinner so much that I decided to have one also that Leonardo could come to.  So on Monday for FHE we got ready.  The kids didn't really know what was happening, just that there was a lot of bustling and preparing and trying to get costumes finished.  I had plans to cook food, but in the end, ran out of time and had my husband pick up a rotisserie chicken, a block of cheese, fruit and some loaves of bread up on the way home.  I boiled some eggs and we had some sparkling cider.  That saved a lot of time and stress!!!  After hubby got home, he changed into Leonardo and we had a feast with our guest by candle and fire light.  My husband has taken all of this quite seriously and has researched before hand extensively.  Another surprise, as he has never really been involved with the schooling before!!  He really knew a lot about Leonardo.
 


Kids waiting anxiously for our guest to arrive!  




Leonardo arrives carrying a book that contained calligraphy supplies and his notebook.  I am going to let the kids learn to do calligraphy with nib pens.

The family with Leonardo da Vinci!!

March 2008

03/19/2008

Catching Up

Here goes!  I have a lot to catch up on and I don't think I understand the blog yet, but
I'll give it a shot. One of the things that we did on our own was make a diorama.  It is based on the Middle Ages philosophy of " For All."  Each kid made one level.  At the lowest level, the peasants provided food "for all", the knights protected all, the royalty ruled all, and the Church was above all.

 

The other thing we did was each kid made their own coat of arms representing something about themselves.  They each had their "mark of cadency" which represents their birth order in the family ~ a bird for 4th, annulet for 5th, Fleur-de-lis for 6th and Rose for 7th.  They picked colors based on the meaning. Landon added soccer balls and Parker has a Cub Scout symbol.                                                                    


Here Pierce is teaching about weaving.  He and Landon needed to teach something for a requirement for a Boy Scout merit badge.  He taught them about a loom, etc, then he taught them how to make a simple loom out of a paper plate.
 

They all made looms and practiced weaving.  This technique made a "rope" similar to what some of you may remember from your childhood using a wooden spool with nails in it. Landon uses a yardstick to make lines on his plate.                                     

Pierce demonstrates the actual technique for making the rope.

Landon taught part of the candle unit.  He taught the vocabulary for candles after reading some books.  He decided that he wanted to do dipped candles and poured candles.  We used crayons to color wax we bought at the hobby store. Older sister couldn't resist the fun and had a moment of wishing she was back at home school!  The favorite part for the boys was burning the candles!!  Are all boys pyromaniacs?

Making the coins was fun.  They learned some hard lessons about mirror writing as Pierce's "55" coins came out as "22" because he forgot to make the mold in reverse.  Landon realized that he needed to do that all on his own!!   
                                          
I want to take them on a field trip to the Denver mint, but I think I'll wait until there is less chance of running into bad weather. 
We also went on a field trip to a fiber farm.  The lady that owns it raises all kids of animals for their fur.  She had alpacas, llamas, sheep.  She had a friend come over and demonstrate a spinning wheel for us.  She let the kids try carding raw wool and gave us a drop spindle and showed us how to use it.  She told the kids all about dyeing, too.

Sterling cards some wool.




The drop spindle was made from a CD and a pencil with a hook in the eraser. 

Oh do you know the muffin man?  The muffin man, the muffin man???  Pierce with a batch of made from scratch blueberry muffins that he made himself!

We have started on Meeting at Guild Hall,but I am struggling with it a little.  I'm not quite sure what I am doing.  The kids decided to make a Pizza Guild and even though it wasn't quite what was called for, I let them go for it because they were enthusiastic about wanting to become Masters at making pizza. I feel a little lost but hope that I'll feel back in the groove when we start making bread and making candles.  There is still a lot that I have not done, like the quote book and the time line.  I have started to make them, but not finished.  The other big surprise was how much the older boys liked the poems during brain week.  I actually ordered the book off Amazon (I had a copy from the library) because they enjoyed and understood the poetry!!  We leave Monday to go to Arizona for a Renaissance Festival.  So that will put us another two days behind!  At this rate we'll never catch up!  Is it just me, or is there a lot of material to cover??  I have a hard time fitting it all in with the other stuff we do like soccer, lessons, field trips, math, etc. We still need to make the guild money and do the laws, etc. 

Well, happy lighting those minds on fire!!!  

The Faire

Well, despite sick kids, we headed out to Arizona for the Renaissance Festival on Monday.  I knew that if I didn't just go, it would never happen.  It was me and my five youngest kids.  Pierce is almost 14 and is very helpful.  We got in late on Monday and had to set up the pop-up tent trailer in the dark.  I had never done it before, but Pierce really knew what he was doing, thank goodness!!  The next morning we headed to the faire.  Most of it was pretty commercial and there were a lot of shops selling things.  But it was definitely an experience.  The buildings were permanent and really cool.  On our way in, there were tons of school kids waiting with their classes and unfortunately some were making comments about our family being in costume.  This got to my 11yo and he had a bit of an attitude the rest of the day.  The jousting match was a little lame, but still gave the kids an idea what it would have been like.  After lunch we found the area where they do the reenactment of daily living.  This was, of course, the stuff we really came for.  There was a glass blower, weavers, spinners, candle makers, etc.  Most of the people working there were a couple of HS families so there were kids.  It was awesome.  There were some nice examples of the buildings and furniture. 
We also had fun buying some cool things.  Parker got a nifty wooden bow.  Landon and Sterling both wanted some little dragons that sit on your shoulder and you can make them move with a cable down your sleeve.  Pierce got sealing wax and a seal.  I got a wall hanging.  Of course, everyone that worked there was in costume and I came away definitely feeling like our costumes were very lame.  But it gave me a lot of ideas! 

We headed home after the faire because kids had activities on Wed.  We took a different route home and experience a hair-raising drive into a deep canyon with a gorge.  When we got to the bottom and pulled over to see the river, my brakes were smokin'!! And that was with taking the overdrive off!  I wouldn't take that road again.  But in the end we got home safe and sound.

Today we took a tour of our local newspaper.  An early "Being There" experience for Gutenberg.  The newspaper was awesome.  We learned so much.  They even gave us a printing plate to take home.

 We also did a tour of a bank last week.  A "Being There" related to money. This was a neat field trip.  We saw everything behind the scenes.  The vaults, the safes, how the tellers send things to the drive up, etc.

Field trip to the bank.

At the faire.  We had just arrived.

In front of the jousting arena.

This lad was making a net.

 

This girl was making yarn dolls.  She gave Sterling one to take home.

The kids with the spinner.  She also showed us her drop spindle.

The funnest thing the boys did.  A game where you tried to knock your opponent off the log with a sack.  After this their costumes looked very authentic with straw stuck all over their jerkins.

The end of a long day.The jesters wishing us a good journey.

The King's chancellor took a final picture with us outside the gates. You can see Landon and Sterling's dragons and Parker's bow.

The river at the bottom of the gorge