Savor The Days

Costumes Make Everything Better

Sometimes you just have to put on your fancy princess costume to make it through the school day. Costumes make everything better, right?

Even the rough days are a blessing with this sweet girl though.

Tapestry of Grace: Marco Polo

This week we are studying the Mongols and Marco Polo. Marco Polo was born in Venice in 1254. When he was 17 years old he traveled the Silk Road to China with his father and uncle who had befriended the Chinese emperor Kublai Khan. Khan later sent Marco Polo on ambassador missions around the area. As we read about Marco Polo's travels, Rachel marked his journey on a map.

Marco Polo saw many wonderful things during his explorations. Europeans were not aware of some of the plants, animals, and inventions in the Far East. Marco Polo recorded many of the amazing sights in his book The Travels of Marco Polo. We made a list of just some of the things he saw including "a very ugly unicorn that looked like a pig" (which was probably a rhinoceros) and "lions with stripes" (tigers).

The Silk Road was an ancient network of routes from Europe to China that opened up opportunities for exploration and discovery of other countries but most importantly it allowed for merchant trading across continents. The Europeans were not aware of silk until explorers like Marco Polo had discovered it in the Far East. We talked a little about how silk is made and even looked at some real cocoons from 2 silk moths that we raised in the past.

Travel on the Silk Road was hard. There were bandits along the way who were ready to rob merchants of their goods. But also the terrain was challenging as well. Marco Polo traveled over mountains and deserts and much of this travel couldn't have been done without the use of camels. The kids liked reading the cute little story of The Happy Dromedary camel.

We watched a few videos on Marco Polo and the world of ancient China to wrap up our week. My kids love the Explorers of the World DVD series. Different explorers' paintings come to life and talk about why they traveled and what their lives were like.

Tapestry of Grace Co-op: Building Castles (part 2) and Chess

We have learned more about castles this week. The kids especially enjoyed an awesome pop-up book that I found! It's called Castle: Medieval Days and Knights. It has great descriptions and fun pop-up pieces on every page!

This page shows all of the different rooms found inside a castle and the keep.

Of course, my kids would like the room where the guying is going poop the best! I feel sorry for the guy downstairs that had to clean this up.

We read that being a knight wasn't all about fame and glory. It was a dangerous job too!

I really love the great pop-up scenes in this book. Look at this king's feast where he is knighting someone. Isn't that cute?

At co-op this week, the grammar students finished up their castles. There was lots of messy paint so you know Rachel had a great time!

Ta-da! The royal palace of Rachel painted in silver and turquoise, her favorite (although not realistic) colors.

For the dialectic students, I taught them how to play chess. It is a great game for this time period. It involves all of the medieval characters like pawns (peasants), castles, knights, bishops, kings, and queens but it also involves strategy like that which would need to be used in fighting an enemy during this time. We have one chess set but two awesome friends loaned me sets so I had 3 sets total for the 5 kids to play with. Nicholas played against me for the first round.

He was so intense and focused as we played. We should really play this game more often. There are lots of articles about benefits of playing chess like problem solving skills, mental acuity, emotional intelligence, and more.

I really played my best but Nicholas enjoyed winning the game. We will have to have a rematch!

Before we were done with our chess games, the littles came in and watched for a while. They couldn't wait for the big kids to be done so they could take their turn at chess too!

Tapestry of Grace Co-op: Castles and Knights

We've been learning castles and knights in our study of Medieval Times. At co-op the grammar level students built a castle out of cardboard tubes and boxes. What a great idea! Next week they will paint them. I can see little action figures playing all around the castles once they are done. That will be fun!

For literature, they read and discussed The Making of a Knight by Patrick O'Brien (affiliate link). It is a great book to describe one boy's growth from a page into a knight.

It is a good book but Rachel got a little distracted playing with Rosie.

The dialectic students have been reading a version of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. I love having this co-op time with friends so the kids can have real literature discussions about what they are reading.

Then they had to work together to build their own castle....out of a cake! I provided them with a square chocolate cake that already had icing on it. Then I gave them some Oreos, Kit Kat bars, mini Hershey bars, blue and chocolate icing, sprinkles, etc. i enjoyed watching their team work and the castle came together.

They made a moat with the blue icing and a drawbridge out of the Kit Kat bars. They used the mini Hershey bars for bricks on the castle and battlements on the towers.

There may have been some snacking along the way. They added a Keep and a ship in the moat.

All done! They had fun and I love that it was an activity and snack all in one!

Here is one final picture before all the kids, big and little, attacked the castle and ate it!

Nerf War Birthday Party

Nicholas recently had his 12 year old birthday party. Unfortunately, this was many months after his actual birthday but it was a crazy summer and somehow the party just kept getting pushed back.

But now he has had more time to plan what he wanted to do to celebrate and I think it turned out great. He wanted a big Nerf war with his friends. He chose a local park that has some nice trails but also plenty of woods so they could have some "cover".

We provided 800 Yosoo Refill Bullet Darts for Nerf N-strike Elite Series Blasters (affiliate link). They were less expensive than buying real Nerf darts and no one had to worry about bringing their own and losing them in the woods. Boys brought their own Nerf guns but Nicholas also brought several of his so there were plenty of weapons to choose from. I picked up some canvas handyman aprons at Home Depot so the boys could have big pockets around their waists to store Nerf darts in.

The boys are ready!

Stuart had ordered 5 BaoFeng UV-5R Dual Band Two Way Radios (affiliate link). We use these ourselves for ham radio but they have a walkie talkie mode that let the boys communicate with each other and with us. The radios were fun for the boys to take turns using but they were also reassurance for us in keeping in touch with everyone out in the woods.

Stuart and I walked around the woods while the boys were playing just to keep an eye on things. For safety, the boys were supposed to always stay in pairs but sometimes they ran around as a whole team. It was so much fun watching them and listening to them scheming on how to attack the other team or hearing calls to each other through the woods asking for back up because an enemy team was approaching.