The air is warmer and filled with powdery, yellow pollen, the white fluffy blooms of  my neighbor’s Bradford Pears are viewable outside my front window, and the forerunning greenery of daffodils are finally poking through the ground.  Spring is here!  At least, in South Carolina.  If you are from the northern climes, I assure you, it is coming.

I have always loved this time of year, seeing the earth renew itself and reminding me that I am a new creation in Christ — the old  has passed away, the new has come! (2 Cor. 5:17)   And in a few short weeks, Easter will be here!  For Christians, this is one of the most important times of the year.  This is the time we want to teach or remind our children of the death and resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ.  We often attend Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter services in our churches, but we also want to take this opportunity in our homes to renew our understanding and appreciation of Christ’s sacrificial death and glorious resurrection on our behalf.

Recently I was thrilled to come across an e-book called Holy Week Family Devotions.  It was written by a dear homeschooling sister, Miiko Gibson, a very sweet cyber-friend who loves the Lord and desired to create “something that would capture the essence of the Holy Week”.  She wanted her children to be able to relive some of the last events in the earthly life of Jesus and reflect on how they were applicable to our lives today.  Miiko’s 28 page e-book devotional contains devotions for Holy Week, the seven days leading up to Easter Sunday.  Each day begins with reading scripture, singing an applicable hymn (it helps to have a hymnbook with this if you don’t know the words, but Miiko suggests you sing something else if that is simpler) and a key verse for that day.  That is followed by the short devotional portion, Looking at Jesus, written in simple language easily understood by younger children yet applicable to older ones as well.  Pertinent and engaging, the Looking into our Hearts section contains reflective discussion questions and applications and is followed by a prayer relating to the lesson.  Miiko includes additional notes for older children, as well as a hands on activity for each day’s devotion.  An additional family activity is also included to reinforce the lesson – we know those hands on activities make learning stick, especially for the younger ones.

I loved this devotional and wish it had been around when my children were younger!  Miiko is making Holy Week Family Devotions available for $6.95 and can be purchased on her website.  (Click here to visit Grace Journey Press website). She also has created a board game to go along with this devotion.While you are there, she also has additional free downloads.  I love her Ten Hints for Keeping Your Daughters Heart. Enjoy!

God’s blessings on you and your families this week,

Make a Middle Ages Dictionary!

Part 1

Learning a subject’s vocabulary is an essential part of learning about a subject.  This project will greatly enhance your student’s understanding of the Middle Ages and can be applied to many other time periods or topics as well.  There are many terms in Adam of the Road that relate to items or activities specific to the Middle Ages. Each time your student discovers a medieval term in his reading or vocabulary word lists, have him include it in his dictionary.  You might challenge him to find as many words as possible and offer a small incentive if he reaches a certain number of words. If you are teaching more than one student of similar ages/abilities, you might even have a contest for the most words included.

This project can be as simple or elaborate as you like. If you have a student who is adamantly not artsy craftsy, you may have him simply make this dictionary as a list on regular notebook paper and keep it in his history notebook.  OR, you may choose to have him incorporate art work, computer clip art, or even make a cover for it.  (See directions below in Part 2.)

Many of the time-specific words encountered in Adam of the Road and other Middle Ages reading can be found in a regular dictionary, but some of them require a little more research.  An online encyclopedia or the following links to online medieval glossaries may be helpful. Try here.

Note that we have not checked out every word in these glossaries and we always advise you to supervise your students on the Internet!

Your student may use lined or unlined paper for this project, or, if he can type, he may key in his words and definitions into a spreadsheet program where they then could easily be sorted into alphabetical order.  If that is not an issue or if your student would rather write, decide how you want to break up the alphabet—maybe two pages for A-C, D-F, etc. Notebook dividers or tabbed cardstock can be used to separate sections.  As your student completes his daily reading for this unit, have him keep an ongoing list of medieval terms and their definitions.

In the first chapter of Adam of the Road, many words are included describing monastic life including: nones, matins, prime, (times of prayer), abbot, and abbey. Also, if you are using Epi Kardia’s Middle Ages-1 Lesson Plans, have your student include words from his vocabulary list:  surcoat, mantle (clothing items), minstrel, heraldry…  There will be words throughout the book and other reading selections that could also be included in your student’s dictionary.

If your middle-schooler enjoys hands on projects, encourage him to make a more elaborate book. He may want to intersperse his book with drawings pertaining to the middle ages, such as:

• drawings of a knight, king, queen, monk, minstrel
• illustrations depicting scenes from Adam of the Road or other reading
• diagram of a castle
• illustration of some of the words included in his dictionary

After all the words have been added to the dictionary, it is time to make the cover!

Part 2

If you are choosing the the simple approach but want to have some kind of a cover, just use a 1/2 inch 3 ringed view binder and have your student decorate the cover insert with a drawing or computer clip art. Search for more clip art by using other terms such as knight, castle, monastery and medieval.

If your student would like to create a more involved cover for his dictionary, he could start with two thick pieces of stiff cardboard measuring about 9″ x 12″ and a piece of contact paper measuring 21 inches long by about 15″ wide.  (He will also need glue, two pieces of blank 8 1/2″ x 11″ white paper, a ruler, scissors and a stapler. If a heavy-duty stapler is needed, have your local Office Depot or Staples help with that part.)

1. Fold the contact paper in half loosely (before removing the backing!) to find the middle.
2. Open the paper again and lay it out lengthwise, with the colored/patterned side down.
3. Place the cardboard side by side on the wrong side of the contact paper, in a portrait (not landscape) fashion, allowing about a pencil width between the the pieces of cardboard.
4. The cardboard should have about an inch margin of contact paper above the top and about two inches on the bottom.  Trim the four corners of the contact paper to make neater corners once they are folded.
5. Remove the cardboard and carefully remove the backing of the contact paper.
6. Lay the contact paper out as before, with the right/patterned side down, and place the two pieces of cardboard evenly, side by side on top of the sticky side of the contact paper, with a pencil-width margin between the pieces.
7. Carefully and neatly fold the top and bottom margins of the contact paper over the cardboard. Start with the middle and work your way out to the sides.Carefully and neatly fold the side margins over the cardboard.
8. Glue a blank sheet of unlined white paper over the ends of the contact paper inside each side of the bookcover. (These are called endpapers.)
9. Take the stack of dictionary papers and make sure they are in order. Line up the stack, and place it in the middle of the book, centering it top and bottom with the cardboard pieces. Make sure the left margin of the stack is in contact with the center margin of the contact paper.
10. Close the book cover and staple at least three times down the length of the fold, making sure you are stapling all of the papers inside the book.
11. Decorate the cover of the book by writing a title in permanent ink and adding stickers or gluing on beads/yarn, etc.

Read about medieval books and look at some pictures here for inspiration!

Whether you use this lesson or not, we would love to see pictures of the books you make with your students!  Send them to dana@epikardia.com and we will post them!

Blessings on your school week!

The idea of writing about books is not new –remember those boring book reports (snore!) we had to write? However, writing a book review of a well-loved, exciting book in order to convince someone else to read it is much easier to sell and much more fun to write.  For some students, posting the review on Amazon.com afterward makes it even more enticing!  This lesson is excerpted from the Ancients unit of our Middle School-1 lesson plans but could be adapted for younger or older students:

(Note: for many students, especially younger ones, it is very helpful to talk through the answers to these questions ahead of time. Either the student and/or teacher may take notes for the student to use when actually writing the review.)

1.  The first paragraph should be an introductory paragraph, including the title of the book and the author’s name. This should be followed by a few overview sentences stating why another student would want to read the book.  (i.e., It was one of the most exciting stories…/…had one of my favorite characters/…had an inspirational ending/…was about my favorite subject or period of history, etc.)

2. The next paragraph should tell what the story is about and include the main conflict, or problem, of the story.  (An example from the book Hittite Warrior: A young Hittite, Uriah, makes a promise on his father’s death bed and has to travel alone to foreign lands in search of a man named Sisera, whom Uriah hopes will take him in.)

3.  In the following paragraph, your student should tell about his favorite parts of the book. A few incidents will be enough–caution him about writing down too many parts or going into too much detail here.

4.  The last paragraph should include the main message of the book and should restate what the book meant to him or what he learned from reading it. Your student may want to add one final statement about why someone else would want to read this book.

Additional points:

For more ideas about teaching writing, review our Reluctant Writer series.

Happy Writing!

Dana

Most of us wonder how homeschooling through high school will affect our children, especially if our children think they might like to join the rank and file in public high school instead of continuing to be schooled at home.  We often wish we could look ahead and see how it will turn out before we take that leap of faith. As a follow up to my recent post about what I loved about homeschooling, I would like to share a comment from a current college student who was homeschooled through high school (who just happens to be my daughter). LOL I hope it will prove to be as encouraging to you as it was to me! And thank you, Sweetie, for taking the time and effort to make the comment and for allowing us to post it!

So are you encouraged?!

May God bless your week!