The Medieval Age ~ Part 2

This week was filled with some hard times. Our sweet old dog of 16 passed away at the very beginning of the week. We also had a host of dentist appointments (with fillings for me) and other smaller complications along the way. We made it to the end of the week and for that I am grateful. I thought we hadn't accomplished much. However, when I look back over our recorded lessons, we did accomplish lots of good stuff.

We accomplished reading, spelling, math, and CNN Student News each day. Then we got down to the cool history/science stuff!

Books we read this week ~ 

• A Street Through Time A 12,000-Year Walk Through History (We only read up through the Bubonic Plague)
• The Kingfisher Atlas of the Medieval World
• Good King Wenceslas with DVD as read by Jane Seymour and the Tabernacle Choir
• Crispin and the Cross of Lead
• You Wouldn't Want to Live Without Antibiotics

Activities we did this week ~

• During medieval times (and long before that), rosemary was used as a preservative for meats and other foods. So we explored the properties of rosemary and whether it was a good preservative or not. We cut a potato in half and placed rosemary on one slice and left the other alone for five hours. We wanted to see if the rosemary would help keep the potato white and slow down the process of color change. We thought the potato slices had changed color about equally, so the rosemary was not a good preservative, at least not for potatoes.

• We did a blindfolded smell test of sage, rosemary, thyme, and parsley. The kids only struggled with identifying parsley, which we do not use often.

• We learned about and made Celtic Knots and Celtic designs.

• We learned more about medical care in medieval times. We learned about the use of maggots and how they are being brought back into use in hospitals today. We also learned about the antibiotic properties of moss and how clean moss can be packed into a wound to help keep infection away. We also learned about advances in surgery during the Middle Ages.

• We created our learning board for our medieval dinner. We will be hosting a medieval dinner with show and tell for family and friends in a week or so. 

• We read Good King Wenceslas and watched the DVD by the Tabernacle Choir. I just love this book. It is one of my favorite Christmas stories and the music on the DVD is divine. You can hear this lovely book and DVD on YouTube here.

• We created our Operation Christmas Child boxes and talked about Good King Wenceslas and the spirit of giving.

We watched some great videos on YouTube this week ~

• Marco Polo ~ Link
• History of Medieval Music ~ Link
• Ave Maria Gregorian Chant ~ Link
• Composers of the Medieval Period ~ Link
• The invention of the printing press ~ Link
• Magna Carta ~ Link
• Middle Ages surgery ~ Link
• How to draw a Celtic knot ~ Link

Next week we will be learning about a  medieval Christmas!

Other Posts on the Blog this week ~ 

• Urban Nature Study week 2
• Operation Christmas Child ~ Keep it simple sister

Blessings, Dawn