This project was chosen because we had both a children's book on the Great Fire of London and an opportunity to visit The Monument.
As well as reading non-fiction books on the Great Fire we also read Fire! Fire! by Stuart Hill, a short historical fiction story about Samuel Pepys servant boy during the fire.
This Week's Reading
We also watched a classic time-travelling episode of Magic Grandad where they travel back to 1666.
Of course the advantage of home education is that you are not restricted to books and videos, but can go out and about. We climbed to the top of the Monument (all 311 steps), built to both commemorate the event and act as a science lab, and were pleased that even the 3 year old managed the climb without making a fuss (which is more than can be said for some of the other puffing and wheezing tourists!).
The Monument
We also visited the Museum of London which has an exhibition on the Great Fire (although the diorama accompanying the video didn't seem to be working properly on this visit).
Museum of London
Finally we got them to create their great fire pictures with black paper and coloured tissue paper.
This week's project was initiated by the Katherine of Aragon festival that was taking place at Peterborough Cathedral, where she is buried.
The week started with lots of reading and videos about life in Tudor times, the kings and queens (especially Henry VIII), the reformation, and the dissolution of the monasteries. We also looked at the impact of Shakespeare at the end of the Tudor period, and some of the idioms he introduced to our language. Solomon and Monica chose to watch the animated Richard III twice!
There was a school's day at the cathedral as part of the Katherine of Aragon festival and a group of home educated children took part. They wore monks' scapulas, tried singing in plainsong, learned about the history of the cathedral, Katherine of Aragon, monk's manuscripts, and had a go at using a quill and ink to write their name.
Solomon and Monica's manuscripts
The day finished with a talk on arms and armoury, and whilst Monica wanted to try on a gauntlet, Solomon was more interested in asking questions on the suitability of using arrows to scale walls and hitting people on the head with hammers.
The Armoury
Finally they finished off the week by designing their own ruffs at home.
We had signed up Solomon to a home education natural learning workshop on the Stone Age, and decided to supplement this with a few other activities to make it the focus of this week's project.
The workshop at Ferry Meadows involved shelter building and fire making. Solomon preferred the shelter building to the fire making, as the fire making was a bit tricky - which is probably a good thing as we're in the middle of a heat wave.
Making shelters and fire at Ferry Meadows
We supplemented the workshop by reading Stone Age in the DK findout series, and watched the BBC Story of Britain videos about the middle stone age (below) and new stone age.
We got Stone Age as part of a series of books we bought when doing Project 28: Dinosaurs. It's the perfect level for Solomon, and covers everything from day to day life, to beliefs, making tools, and mammoths.
TED-Ed have created a 360° animation about cave paintings, so we downloaded Google Cardboard and bought a decorate and play virtual reality viewer for the kids to watch it with. Calibrating the viewer was a bit trickier than I'd expected, but we got there eventually. The kids really enjoyed exploring 360 videos, as well as decorating the viewer (albeit with non-stone age pictures).
To accompany the previous week's project of The Vikings, we looked at the Saxons. Unsurprisingly there is a lot of overlap between the projects, and many of the books we used were the same: History of Britain: the Saxons & Vikings, Great Stories of British History, and Horrible Histories: Smashing Saxons. We also looked up what was happening in the local area in local history books, and overlaid an old map of the area showing a Saxon burial ground with a modern map, showing that there was a Saxon burial ground at the end of our road!
Saxon burial ground at the end of our road
BBC Bitesize have a wide range of guides on the Saxons, about their culture and kings, and Solomon enjoys the fact that they are more interactive than the usual videos and books.
We haven't really had many project-based trips in recent weeks, so it was good to have two for the Saxons. Firstly, we had a day trip to London, to visit the British Library and the British Museum, and then we went to the Peterborough Heritage Festival.
We ostensibly went to the British Library to look at the sorts of manuscripts the Saxon monks would have been working on, but the treasures gallery is full of interesting items and objects, from Ada Lovelace's 'first computer program', Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, to Beatles lyrics. Like all small children Solomon enjoyed the interactive elements - the touchscreens and audio recordings - as much as the objects. He particularly enjoyed the recording of Beowulf and Alan Bennett's recording of Alice in Wonderland.
We went to the British Museum to see the Sutton Hoo collection, and other items from the Saxon period. We last went to the British Museum as part of the project on Ancient Egypt, but with so much to see there, it's always good to focus on a specific collection.
Hoo's on first?
The Peterborough Heritage Festival covers a wide range of historical periods, from Romans to World War 2 with a bit of Steam Punk thrown in on top. Solomon enjoyed the vikings, and even had a giant game of Nine Men's Morris (introduced in the Board Gamesproject).
