Our new term sees Ballet Girl studying for her final few exams and Monkey Girl and Panda Girl working hard on their High School Diploma. It also sees us on the brink of a house move which brings its challenges regarding boxed up school books for The Boy and Sunbaby, with less space to function! Covid is also keeping our libraries closed which have always been an invaluable resource for me so we are doing our best under the current circumstances.
We continued with the previous term's thematic unit, our DNA, which has been fun and fascinating and all things cross curricular.
We kick-started with a look at Ancient Rome and Roman Britain. I have a close DNA match with a Nordic, Celtic Roman Gladiator from an archaeological dig in York, and several other Roman matches across Britain.
Sunbaby's work consisted of lots of stickers, craft, workbooks which I made for her and hands-on activities. She likes to be busy and while she probably has little concept of history, her creations have supplemented The Boy's more in depth study, quite nicely.
The Boy made an awesome Ancient Rome lapbook
The Romans bought apples to Britain so we've had fun with apple matching, numbers and letters.
Volcano play
Laurel wreath
Mount Vesuvius and Pompeii
Batman learnt about the Romans, right?
A visit to a Roman Farmstead
Making a Roman Villa
STEM experimenting with making a catapult
Sunbaby making a Roman Villa
Picking apples, thanks to the Romans!
Metal detecting for Roman coins! We didn't find any but we did find some corrugated metal and then we spent over an hour digging up a big metal lid of some sort.
Roman fun with apples, yoghurt and honey
Roman coins (fake ones!)
Making our own coins
Roman market
Smashing up Ancient Rome like the Vandals and Visigoths whose DNA we also have. 😂
BBC Bitesize have some great resources on Ancient Rome and Roman Britain.
Vesuvius
Roman market fun times!
Bees and honey. The Romans loved honey
Honey tasting session
The Boy and I spent an afternoon reading this awesome book.
The Boy made a map of Roman Britain including the late era Saxon shore forts used to defend the country from invading Saxons, as well as Watling Street, forts, villas and major towns.
The Picts lived in Scotland and were never fully conquered by the Romans. I drew a Pict (eyeliner) tattoo on his arm because that is how we roll.
He also looked at Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine wall which was made of turf and only successfully kept the Picts out for approximately 20 years. Hadrian's Wall, however, still stands today. We checked it out on Google Earth and then, obviously, made it out of cake.
Selling Hadrian's Wall to family members.
Playing marbles like the Romans
Sunbaby did a little about Italy itself including a picture of Venice...
...making pizza...
... the Italian flag and colour matching...
...and pasta threading.
Roman honey cakes and a Roman, slightly over-cooked, honey bear, accompanied by Roman slouch-eating (technical term).
A change of recipe
Volcano and un-Roman related dinosaur play
Roman dice, numbers and tally marks
Sunbaby is learning sight words. I've never pushed reading on my children because they figure it out in their own time and I only ever pursue it when they express interest. This girl is expressing interest at age 3, and has decided she can remember any sight words I can show her! I love how everyone is different! Reading here we come, then!
My other DNA matches are Vandal, Visigoth, Belgae, Ostrogoth, Scythian and Frank. Rather than take each of these tribes and dissect their history individually, I decided, considering our lack of current resources, to look at the European countries they were located in. We had a mini look at each country or area. Note: I have not covered France or the Franks because the children are half French and we have done much work on France over the years, so I wanted to focus elsewhere.
All my DNA samples are European.
Sunbaby made a Dutch windmill, tulips and a Dutch Apple Pancake which was crazy delicious. My Dutch sample match is a plague victim from 1300s which is something I would like to investigate further if I can make the match in my paper trail family tree.
I have a Visigoth DNA sample match to Northern Spain so a morning with Salvador Dali and Surrealism was called for.
We looked at Dali's elephants and The Boy used a brilliant YouTube video to help him draw this masterpiece.
Sunbaby had fun with photos in an elephant
Sunbaby made Spanish maracas and shook them while we listened to some Spanish songs. Cute :)
Poland and Chopin. (My Poland matches are all Bronze Age.) The Boy listened to Chopin and drew an abstract piece using the music as his inspiration, followed by a short piece about Chopin's life.
More and many Bronze Age matches in the Czech Republic. Otto Wichterle was a Czech scientist who invented the modern soft contact lens. Sunbaby looked at eyes, did an eye colour survey and made a Czech flag.
The Boy watched an Operation Ouch episode on eyes which he particularly enjoyed, then a little about Otto Wichterle and a diagram of the anatomy of the eye.
A lot of my DNA matches Germanic tribes. The Boy made a German potato salad. I thought it was yummy! The others found it a little too vinegar-y and sugar-y.
I have some Bronze Age DNA sample matches to various places in the European Alps. After looking at the Alps on Google Earth we did a morning looking at winter sports in the mountains.
Making a mountain
And our whole project finished off with some virtual sledging!
