Story of the World, Vol. 2, Chapter 17 - Knights & Samurai

If you click on the pictures, they'll enlarge and you'll see more details in the shields and helmet.

We had so much fun with with Chapter 17 - Knights & Samurai - from our History textbook, Story of the World, Vol. 2!  It has actually been the most enjoyable chapter we've done so far.  We did crafts, watched movies, completed a word search, read and really absorbed the learning while having fun.  The SOTW activity book has not provided us with many activities to date.  B does color the map page for every chapter (although he is not interested in any of the other coloring pages), but the activities we've done have been few and far between.  There are lots of suggested activities, however most use supplies we don't have on hand and would involve going to the craft store each week for several supplies.  That cost adds up.  Especially on weeks when an activity requires yards of fabric to be purchased.  I can get creative somewhat and we substitute with what we have on hand, where we can, but on the whole we don't do them.  This chapter, however, provided activities we could do:

• B did a word search that included Arthur and the names of the 12 Knights of the Round Table.  
• He used the knight's shield template to make a shield for himself (the one on the left in the picture) and one for our cats, Yin & Yang (the one on the right - our two cats actually drawn in the Yin Yang position!).  Since he was making shields, he decided to make a Captain America one, as well, and a sword.  All three shields are glued onto cardboard and B's and the Captain America ones have handles on the back.  The handled shields and the sword have been well loved and used during play with his neighborhood friends.  :o)
• B made an origami samurai helmet out of wrapping paper - the only paper I had that was big enough to give us a 22"x 22" square.  The directions for the helmet in the SOTW Activity Book were confusing to us but, thankfully, we found this great tutorial on YouTube.  B was not happy that I asked him to give me a "fierce" look for the pictures here of him in his helmet.  He said, "Mom, I am incapable of making an angry face in pictures. You just can't take me seriously."

We watched First Knight with Sean Connery and Richard Gere, Disney's The Sword in the Stone and The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe.  I was worried about the violence in The Last Samurai, and was planning to skip any battle scenes if they were too much, but I didn't.  The Die Hard movies had more graphic violence in them than The Last Samurai, IMO.  That movie was very well done and did a great job explaining the POV of the samurai - their traditions, service, loyalty and honor - and showed the Japanese reserved way of not always saying what they mean.  Even the emperor didn't speak his mind!  We also read a good, short, library book, Samurai by Caroline Leavitt.  The photos and illustrations are beautiful and it suplimented the SOTW chapter with more details.  And, of course, B did his lapbook exercise (he calls it his chapter craft) for this chapter.

Here's to more fun and activity-filled learning in our next chapters!

GeoSafari Laptop

My MIL gave B this GeoSafari Laptop 3 years ago after we announced we were removing B from public school and homeschooling him.  I brought this out a few times and sat him down to play with/learn from it right after he got it and it made him angry.  He didn't know the answers so that made him frustrated and he didn't want to spend the time to learn.  I put away on our homeschool bookcase and decided we'd revisit it another time. And although I would gaze upon it a few times during the past 3 years, I never pulled it back out again, until last week.

Although we got off to a rocky start with our History curriculum, Story of the World, Vol. 2, this "school" year, we've been doing much better since I discovered a free lapbook to accompany SOTW, Vol. 2 last month.  B is enthusiastic about the lapbook because he sees it as "craft time"; the learning is fun.  Every couple of chapters now, we go back and read through our lap book, as well as the review cards in our SOTW Activity Book.  Since B is now retaining more of the History and Geography facts from the Middle Ages with the addition of the lapbook, I decided to bring out the GeoSafari Laptop.

In addition to geography sheets, there are sheets on inventions, Language Arts, Math, quotations, famous people in History, landmarks, animals, weather, anatomy, wars and more.  B had a great time with sheets on continents, bodies of water, world landmarks and ancient wonders of the world.  Succeeding at something is a wonderful incentive to keep doing something.  And it was good to see that what we had be learning for almost 3 years now, was sticking with him.  I like new ways of learning as well as new ways of "testing" retention.  We will definitely be using the GeoSafari Laptop regularly.

The Story of the World - Our History Curriculum for 4th Grade

Last year, based on feedback from other homeschoolers, we used Sonlight curriculum for Social Studies, Geography, Language Arts and Science.  Regardless of how good or bad a curriculum sounds, it's always good to get the feedback of someone you know who has used it, as well as what learning and personality style worked best with it.  We loved the literature-based approach of Sonlight, but with me working full-time outside of the home this past year, it was way too much to keep up with and I felt it lacked review to ensure retention of information.  This year, we are using The Story of the World, Volume II for History.  We received a number of thumbs-up from homeschoolers we know regarding these curricula.  And by "this year" let me explain our "school" year.  We take the month of June and around the 2nd week of December through the Epiphany off.  The rest of the time, we are learning in some form or another.

This is our 3rd year homeschooling.  B went to public school for kindergarten and 1st grade, but we made the decision to homeschool him for 2nd grade, and have reevaluated that decision in the 2 years since then.  At this time, the hubs and I have decided to homeschool B through elementary school and see if he wants to go back to public school when he reaches middle school age.  In my estimation, that gives me 4 years in which to teach him all he needs to know according to the state standards.  Although we are using a different timeline, we hope to arrive at the same destination within the same ETA.  ;o)