Jimmie's Collage » history

Justinian the Great and Byzantium

Jimmie — Tue, 01 May 2012 12:00:00 +0000

For history we have studied Ancient Rome, the fall of Rome, and now Byzantium. The most famous of the Byzantine rulers is Justinian the Great, so I limited our study of Byzantium mostly to him. This is a common trait of a Charlotte Mason education — teaching history through stories of the famous characters of the time rather than a dull overview of facts and dates. Narratives and biographies are far more engaging and much easier to comprehend than sweeping overviews. So in this spirit, our study of Byzantium was really a study of Justinian the Great.

Justinian was born on May 11, c. 482 AD, so we are studying him just in time to celebrate his birthday! [For more homeschool lessons based on famous May birthdays, visit Birthday Lessons in May at iHomeschool Network.]

Living Books for Justinian

After an overview in Streams of Civilization, we read selections taken from Heritage History’s Ancient Rome eBook library. I love how this curriculum outlines the periods within Ancient Rome in easy to understand timelines. Further, it lists the chapters from each of the living books that deal with that particular period.

When I wanted to create lessons for studying Byzantium, Heritage History made it easy. I chose two books from the handful offered.

Famous Men of the Middle Ages, a chapter on Justinian
The Byzantine Empire, 3 chapters on Justinian

Heritage History doesn’t tell me exactly what and how to teach, but it does show me which books cover the period I want to study. Then I can make the decision. (I love having choices in my homeschool curriculum.)

Then I selected a two part videos series for her to watch:

(Pat one contains some adult content in reference to Theodora.)

Last was the notebooking where Sprite narrated all she had read and heard about Justinian onto some pages I designed. You can find the free printable notebooking pages over at The Notebooking Fairy. We added this map of Justinian’s empire which Sprite labeled with the territories that Justinian took back from the “barbarians.”

Notebooking history narrations

One of the printable pages is a quotation by Justinian, “Rather let the crime of the guilty go unpunished than condemn the innocent.” This quote is a perfect representation of the Justinian Codex, the laws that this ruler instituted and which greatly affected our modern system of law in the West. She had a chance to practice her cursive writing, and we took the opportunity to discuss the meaning behind the quote.

Justinian the Great studies

Hagia Sophia

Then we shifted our focus to a famous work of architecture, the Hagia Sophia, built during Justinian’s reign. I always seem to find a way to incorporate art into anything we study. Byzantium was no exception. First Sprite read an overview in the book 50 Buildings You Should Know.

Reading about Hagia Sophia

Then she watched this video.

Then she did more narration via notebooking pages (those are also part of the free printables at The Notebooking Fairy).

Writing about Hagia Sophia

Byzantium Study

This was not a lengthy history study; it took about a week. But it was enough of a taste of Byzantium to lay a good foundation for the history that comes next. With Sprite wrapping up seventh grade, I find that we do almost no fun hands-on activities anymore. And that seems to be a natural transition to more abstract forms of learning based primarily on reading and writing.

However, we do have a great opportunity for a real life cultural experience that relates to our study of Ancient Rome and Byzantium. The Greek festival at a Greek Orthodox church here in Memphis is going to be a perfect opportunity for us to learn first hand about the history, culture, and religion that we have been studying in our curriculum. The festival includes traditional folk dance, a church tour, and lots of authentic foods. Even if it didn’t coincide perfectly with our studies, we would still go because it’s always good to take advantage of a field trip opportunity.

Special Heritage History Discount for My Readers

I want to remind you that the special discount on Heritage History is still available through June 30th.

Use coupon code jimmiescollage for a free Early America CD library when you buy any other classical curriculum CD.

There are five in all: Young Readers, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, British Middle Ages, and British Empire.

It works this way. You need to add both the Early America CD plus any other of the five curriculum libraries to your cart. (That will bring your total to $44.98.) Then use the discount code jimmiescollage, and you will get a $19.99 discount — the cost of the Early America CD. Your total for both discs will then be $24.99.

Homeschool Lessons for Famous People Born in May

If you want more famous personalities to study for May, visit iHomeschool Network for eight more birthday boys ranging from explorers to inventors and physicists to composers.

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Ancient Roman Art

Jimmie — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 13:45:00 +0000

Roman Art Resources

We have taken a break from our usual artist study to do study the art of Ancient Rome. As our spine, I used Ancient Roman Art from the Art in History series. [In previous units, we have used Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece from this same series.]

It was a simple study, just reading a few chapters each day and spending time poring over the art in the oversized art books from the public library.

Looking Through Old Calendar for Roman Art

Sprite looked through last year’s art calendar for examples of art from Ancient Rome. Then she summarized the high points on a notebooking page.

Ancient Roman Art Notebooking Page

sketching gladiators

Normally with any art study, Sprite tries her hand at making a reproduction. For Ancient Rome, she chose to sketch a gladiator from the very masculine book by Richard Watkins. (That book is a real an eye opener about the brutality of the Colosseum. Some parts were actually difficult to read. And I was struck with the violent parallels between Ancient Rome and modern America. Sad.)

For history, we’ll be moving into Byzantium soon.

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Heritage History Living eBooks Curriculum Review

Jimmie — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:35:00 +0000

Over the years, I’ve tried a lot of different living books based curriculum. I started with Sonlight, shifted to Winter Promise, used Beautiful Feet, and now I’ve started falling in love with Heritage History.

Although the basis was always living books, there is a definite thread in my choices. I went from high structure to less and less. In the beginning, I needed a well-planned, “check the box” type of “open and go” curriculum. But as I grew in experience and confidence, I realized that living books and narration were the cornerstones that I could trust. I didn’t need a lot of detailed lesson plans; I needed quality literature and a general outline.

I think my transformation has found its culmination in Heritage History.

What? You’ve never heard of Heritage History? Well, let me introduce you to this hidden gem of living books. But first, a little more background.

Public Domain Books

I have always loved public domain books but have found them difficult to integrate into our homeschool for these reasons.

In a chronological history study, I want the books to be in order. But I never know exactly what time period a public domain book covers.
I don’t want to print the pages from the Internet.
Reading a PDF on the Kindle is also not the best scenario — the type is small, the colors are faint, the pages load slowly.
The freebie ebooks are poorly formatted, full of errors, and do not make use of the normal Kindle features such as the dictionary, bookmarking, highlighting, etc.

Heritage History Curriculum

Heritage History is a library of public domain books beautifully formatted into eBooks. Each book in the library comes in three different formats which means you can use the books no matter what kind of eReader you use — Nook, Kindle, iPad, or computer. The eBooks have all the functionality which your particular device offers (and which freebie eBooks normally lack). I’ll let you go over to Heritage History if you want to read more about the file types and such. The bottom line is that whether you want to print out the books or read them on an eReader, they will work. And work well.

The Aeneid for Boys and Girls on the Kindle DX

Teaching Helps

Along with the books themselves are teaching helps that make using the books easier:

book summaries
general grade classification of each book
suggestions of core books and supplemental books (all included in the CD library)
outlines that clearly show where each book fits into the scheme of chronological history
historical maps
historical background
image files of the illustrations from the books.

What Kind of Homeschool Mom Will Love Heritage History?

Heritage History (HH) is great for a mom who

loves living books
wants affordable books
appreciates the style of public domain books
feels confident to make book selections from a list of options
feels comfortable without the bells and whistles of an elaborate program
has her own ideas of how to organize, schedule, and teach

[a mom like me!]

HH is more of a library than a curriculum. In fact, many people buy the curriculum libraries to use as reading material avid readers or for language arts.

A Mapping Activity-- designed by me-- with the Aeneid

There is no schedule to follow, no boxes to check. There are no hands-on activities, research topics, notebooking assignments, or tests.

There are just quality books (without the politically correct bias of modern books, by the way) plus reference material.

And at this point in my homeschool career, HH is exactly what I want. Just give me the books. We can read them, narrate them, notebook them, and choose our own topics for in-depth tangents.

When we wrapped up Beautiful Feet Ancients, I chose to continue our study of Ancient Rome with some of the great public domain books from Heritage History.

Sample Image from Heritage History CD

How to Use Heritage History as Your History Curriculum

If you trust that reading good books is enough (or you can create your own materials to go along with the books), consider Heritage History as an affordable history option. This is how HH recommends you use the books.

Choose one of the three core books to start with. (There is no right or wrong choice. Just choose the one that appeals to you.)
Read a set number of hours per week, keeping records with the reading log pages. Use notebooking to record what you read.
Select 3-4 supplemental books and read these in the same way.

A CD could last a semester or up to a year depending on how you scheduled and how many of the books you read.

Sampling the eBooks

If you want to sample the eBooks at Heritage History, each book can be purchased individually. Although these books are in the public domain, paying $1.99 for a well formatted book is very much worth it. On my Kindle, for example, a properly formatted book means that I can use the dictionary function and learn the meaning or how to pronounce an unfamiliar word. This function alone is worth $2.

Here’s a short video from when I first loaded the books onto our Kindles.

Corrections and clarifications to what I say on the video:

The eBooks do include images. I simply had not found them at that point. Most of the books were not originally published with illustrations. But if they were, those images are within the eBooks.
Also the notebook is an extra product and does not come with the CD. But the files are on the disc and can be printed out.

Special Heritage History Discount for My Readers

Dave, the owner of Heritage History has kindly offered my readers a special discount. Thanks, Dave!

Use coupon code jimmiescollage through June 30th for a free Early America CD library when you buy any other classical curriculum CD.

There are five in all: Young Readers, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, British Middle Ages, and British Empire.

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Beautiful Feet Ancient History Curriculum Review

Jimmie — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:15:22 +0000

Over the years, I have used three curriculum packages from Beautiful Feet (BF): History of the Horse, History of Classical Music, and now Ancient History Junior High. I like BF Ancient History for the same reasons I like BF in general. All three packages I’ve used have these same characteristics:

a foundation of living books
an emphasis on notebooking
a loose structure

We have already covered Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece. Now, after taking a break from history for many months we are beginning Ancient Rome. Since we are over halfway through the material, it’s a perfect time for a curriculum review.

BF Ancient History in its essence is a teacher’s guide that outlines lessons. (The guide includes an answer key.) There is a junior high track (grades 5-8) and a high school track (grades 9-12) in the same book. At a minimum, you need this teacher’s guide. As far as the living books, you can purchase them from BF in a package or find them on your own. Besides the books and the guide, all you need are normal school supplies and general reference books (or the Internet).

Notebooking

Notebooking assignments are included in the lessons. Examples of typical notebooking tasks are

to copy a quote from a book and comment on it
to explain a person’s behavior
to sketch a map of an empire
to research a personality or event
to write and define a few vocabulary words.

Left to right -- Guide, Notebooking Page, Living Books

The notebooking tasks are always meaningful. That means that not every lesson will have one just to fit an artificial standard. On the other hand, a particularly meaty lesson may have two or three notebooking tasks. The BF guide recommends a composition notebook, but a three ring binder (our favorite) can just as easily be used. Alternatively, you can assign some of the notebooking tasks to be answered orally instead of in writing.

Note that these are notebooking tasks, not pages. There are no reproducibles or hand-outs. There are instructions.

In the photo, you can see an example of the notebooking pages with which I sometimes supplement the BF ancients study. I either make my own or turn to the Ancient Times pages from Notebookingpages.com. [Use discount code discount5 to save $5 on your $10+ purchase; use discount10 to save $10 on your $20+ purchase.]

Structure

I say that BF has a loose structure because although there are clearly detailed lessons, there are no charts or check boxes. I have no regret about skipping over things or adding in tangents. Part of that tendency is simply my growing confidence as a homeschooler. But the organization of the teacher’s guide has a less rigid feel that many other curriculum sets we have used (such as Sonlight or Winter Promise) which have daily lessons laid out on strict grids where you can’t help but highlight or check them off.

The Children's Homer and Teacher's Guide

The BF Ancient History guide for junior high has only 71 lessons. This means you do around three lessons per week to finish the course in a typical school year. (The senior high track has 90 lessons.) This kind of flexible scheduling is good for someone like me who appreciates an order to the study but doesn’t need a day by day guide.

The Books

Ancients Teacher Guide and Book Stack

The books are quality, of course, and are a mix of non-fiction and fiction. According to the directions at the opening of the guide, the reading assignments are to be read out loud so that both parent and child hear the books together. However, the program can be done with the child doing all the reading independently. We do a mix of the two.

There is a single textbook among the selections – Streams of Civilization. I am not a fan of textbooks, so it’s not surprising that this book came off very dry and dull to both me and to Sprite.

The senior high selection includes more books and more difficult ones. Among the junior high choices, our strong favorites were The Children’s Homer and The Bronze Bow.

Timeline

BF sells a set of applicable timeline figures for each curriculum package. I have the entire Homeschool in the Woods timeline figure CD, so I use that instead. For each lesson, the teacher’s guide tells which figures should be placed on your timeline.

BF is a no-frills kind of curriculum. There are no hands-on project ideas. BF doesn’t do a lot of media hype although they do have a Facebook fan page. They have no forum where you can hang out with other users. They just make a quality, affordable curriculum and get out of the way so you can use it.

By the way, I have started an unofficial BF Yahoo group where you can ask questions and get support.

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Ancient Greek Art

Jimmie — Fri, 06 May 2011 14:35:08 +0000

For history, we are wrapping up Ancient Greece. One of the supplemental books I added to the Beautiful Feet curriculum is Ancient Greek Art. The art books in this series give a broad overview and always mesh nicely with our history books. As we read through the book and did a couple of the recommended act projects, Sprite took notes on notebooking pages. You can find those in three posts at The Notebooking Fairy, my second blog devoted exclusively to notebooking.

Of course, our visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art reinforced all we had seen in books with real life artifacts. I snapped a shot of Sprite explaining objects to her father. She felt herself quite the expert after studying Ancient Greek Art. I was quite impressed what she retained and credit much of that to our use of notebooking after each reading assignment.

Another plus was seeing objects similar to ones we had seen in our art calendar. Living books (and calendars) are wonderful, worth their weight in gold, but nothing compares to the real thing.

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Field Trips That Don’t Match Your Curriculum

Jimmie — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 16:30:19 +0000

Slave Haven or Burkle Estate

It doesn’t matter if field trips don’t match perfectly with what you’re studying. In fact, there are advantages of a museum visit long after or even before you’ve studied the topic.

1. REVIEW

For example, it has been some time ago since we studied the Underground Railroad. But our recent field trip to Slave Haven Museum was a perfect chance to review what we learned.

About Slave Haven

German immigrant Jacob Burkle ran the stockyards close to the Mississippi River in what was, at that time, outside of the Memphis city limits. According to folklore, his home was a stop on the Underground Railroad.

Now the Burkle home is a museum that educates visitors about slavery, the abolition movement, and, of course, the path to freedom via the Underground Railroad.

A highlight was touring the cellar where escaping slaves probably rested and refueled for their long journey northward. Unfortunately, photographs were not allowed inside the museum.

Because another group was on the tour when we arrived, we had to wait outside for about 40 minutes to get our turn. But the weather was lovely, and the wait turned out to be well worth it. Our guide (Valencia or Malencia — there was some dispute about her name later) was excellent. She captured the attention of the whole group and patiently answered our questions. I do recommend the Burkle Estate museum for a homeschool field trip (grades four and up).

A museum visit long after your study brings those dormant facts back up to the surface and cements them into the memory once again.

A wonderful took for getting the most out of a “REVIEW” field trip is a K-W-L Chart. I had Sprite fill one out and add it to her history notebook. Before we even left home for the museum, she was beginning to review what we had learned.

You might regret that a field trip didn’t mesh perfectly with the timing of your curriculum, but allowing distance between the study and the field trip is often beneficial for learning. The brain needs time for that new information to simmer. Too much information on one topic can lead to overload where the brain just stops taking in new facts. So don’t worry about a field trip long after a topic of study. It will serve as a great review.

2. PREVIEW

Sprite Reading the TN State Marker at Burkle Estate

Even if we hadn’t already studied the Underground Railroad, the field trip would be an anchor for attaching that learning onto once we reached it in our curriculum. In education circles, this teaching strategy is called activating prior knowledge. As we read our living books, I would be quick to mention the things we saw at the museum which parallel or illustrate what we read.

Slave Haven

The bottom line is that field trips work no matter where they fit into the curriculum. First hand experiences that come from field trips are beneficial whether before or after formal study.

If you love field trips, visit Live the Adventure blog where the Prater family shares their travels around America. I’m sure that their explorations didn’t mesh neatly with their book work. But they take advantage of every historic site and museum that they can. Tonya even has a Field Trip Friday feature on the first Friday of each month. From reading her blog, I’ve discovered another place we want to visit here in Memphis — the Pink Palace Museum.

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Middle School Egypt Study

Jimmie — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 06:58:10 +0000

We covered Ancient Egypt way back in first grade, and now we’re revisiting it in sixth grade, using Beautiful Feet ancients as our base.

THE BOOKS

Non-fiction

Activity/Notebooking/Lapbooking

Remembering God’s Awesome Acts I love this book so much that I’ve already purchased the sequel. It’s in the mail.
History Pockets: Ancient Egypt: Grades 4-6+

Fiction

Books that Bombed

Mummy (Eyewitness Books) (DK Eyewitness Books) This one gets very gruesome towards the end. Sprite didn’t like the pictures. So I put this back on the shelf.

Tales of Ancient Egypt Sprite and I both disliked this book. We read a chapter or two before I decided we had more meaningful books to read. Yuck.

Books Postponed

Mara, Daughter of the Nile This one is sure to be great. The author is one of our favorites. But since I want to wrap up this time period, I’m putting this novel on the shelf of reserve books.

THE PROJECTS

Potato Stamp Heiroglyph Cartouches

Sculpting Tut

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

Sprite put all of the notebooking pages and minibooks created during this study into a bound book made from manila envelopes. She also used the Ancient Egypt pages from our art calendar to spruce up her project pages.

She spread everything out and organized it for her finished project which is a lapbooking-notebooking hybrid.

This is the first inside spread.

The best part about the bound book made from manila envelopes is that you can put notebooking pages into the pockets.

The second inside spread.

Third inside spread. We used three manila envelopes for the base.

Fourth inside spread.

This is Sprite’s monthly writing assignment. She wrote an essay on significant animals in ancient Egyptian culture.

You can see the envelope flap to the right (photo above). Inside that pocket are more notebooking pages (shown below).

Next stop is ancient Greece.

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Egyptian Art — Sculpting

Jimmie — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 06:27:27 +0000

It seems we keep pulling out our carving tools lately.

First it was potato stamp cartouches, now it’s clay sculptures.

I had planned for Sprite to do some drawing in the Egyptian style, but she was more inclined to reproduce a three dimensional object.

I’m flexible. Why not?

She chose the famous Tutankhamen mask.

I didn’t intervene at all. I just gave her the tools. Through trial and error, she learned what was the best order for putting the pieces together. There were a few instances of taking things off and then putting them back on at a later stage in the process.

I love how she hollowed out eye sockets and then put in “eye balls.”

The book pictured here is Ancient Egyptian Art from the Art in History series. We have a few of these titles, and I really like the way they give a concise overview of art in various time periods. They are full of photographs (as an art book really must be) and vocabulary.

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Ancient Egypt Hands-on and Printables

Jimmie — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 13:41:23 +0000

We are using Beautiful Feet’s ancients as our history base, but we’re making room for tangents too. We’ve got several more weeks left of Ancient Egypt, so I will postpone sharing Sprite’s notebooking pages, her minibooks, and the books we read. But there’s a sneak peek at Heart of the Matter with our hieroglyph potato stamp craft.

In the meantime, here are some brand new Ancient Egypt printables:

Enjoy!

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Studying the Civil Rights Movement

Jimmie — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 04:47:30 +0000

Normally I think it’s best to study something and then take the field trip. But when a chance to tour a museum presents itself, I certainly wouldn’t turn it down because we hadn’t reached that part in our curriculum. Actually, for the Civil Rights topic, I think that having our visit to the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, TN was better before our book study.

Books We Used (mainly the first three)

If You Lived at the Time of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Don’t Know Much About American History
Lift the Flap Timelines — American History (notice the yellow timeline below)
Childhood of Famous Americans series — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Amazing African American History
Children’s Encyclopedia of American History

Sprite remembered the main gist of many of the exhibits. So as we read our living books, she already had some understanding of the events. Then she used the postcards I bought at the museum as the meat of her notebooking pages.

Of course, we had to watch the inspiring “I Have a Dream” speech by MLK, Jr. during the 1964 March on Washington. Then I gave her both the printed text and this notetaking guide to analyze the speech a bit.

For more language arts tie ins, I assigned Sprite The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963 (downloaded to her new Kindle 2, but my DX is pictured here) and this proofreading page with a MKL, Jr. theme.

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