You know you're a homeschooler when you travel to Miami for a wedding and you...

a. Hit Miami Beach to get a tan and people watch

b. Hit the clothing stores for the latest in hot designer fashions

c. Hit the nightclubs to salsa dance the night away

d. Hit the amazingly huge educational supply store to stock up on all the goodies you've been hearing about!

Answer:

I am hopeless...absolutely hopeless.

Lent is fast approaching and I feel the need to plan something. I don't want it to be a total departure from our World Architecture studies, but I do want it to be special in its own way. So here's what I've got so far. As always, I am open to suggestions for websites and activities, but I don't want to buy any more books right now.

Sacred Architecture and Symbols of the Church:

1. Gothic Cathedral: Using the David Macauley book, Cathedral, as a spine we will explore the architectural elements of the time, including the gothic arch, vaults, flying buttress, gargoyles, and the cruciform floor plan (and its parts). We will also make our own gargoyles. From that we move on to...
2. Stained glass: we will take a look at designs and symbols in stained glass work as well as how it is constructed and installed and learn the geometry of the famous rose windows.We will study stained glass as an art form and as a means of communicating the faith. We will make our own stained glass windows, both using the tissue paper method, and then using the real thing (luckily, my Mom does this for a living, so it just means a trip to grandma's shop).
3. Our Church: we will study the history of our own hometown church, and then do a study of the stained glass windows there, looking for the symbols and stories we have learned from our glass study. We will either sketch or photograph each window and then write about the symbols and pictures in them. We will also find and identify symbols throughout the church building.
4. We are lucky to be attending Superboy's Godfather's wedding (Superboy is in the wedding party) in Miami, Fl next month, so we will get a chance to check out the architecture of various churches there.
5. Illuminated Manuscripts:  If we have time I'll adapt these lesson plans from the Getty Museum on Illuminated Manuscripts. There are some well-thought-out lessons, and some beautiful images at the site, including the ability to page through some lovely illuminated books. If we can't fit it into our Lenten study, we will fit it in somewhere else for sure!

Throughout the study we will be referring to the lovely book The Symbols of the Church by Maurice Dilasser which is just packed full of incredible pictures and information.

In addition, we have begun our wonderful new religion book-St. Patricks Summer, which we will read  and follow rabbit trails from. We read the first chapter this week (on St Patrick and the Shamrock) and it led to a a wonderful morning spent sketching and doing watercolors of clover leaves picked from the yard and discussing the Blessed Trinity.

We will continue to read our Saint of the day from Catholic Culture and any that strike Superboy's fancy will be added to his timeline or religion notebook.

JBug will be working alongside us as always. She will enjoy the stained glass crafts and will be watching the video of David Macauley's Cathedral. I will make her a rose window puzzle to put together and we will build cathedrals out of legos. For religion she will be focusing on learning the Hail Mary and doing her "Going to Church" coloring book. At our church we will take digital photos and she will be making a little picture book of our church and learning the names of the different things in church, such as altar, baptismal font, confessional, etc.

That's all I can think of now. I'll think on it some more and update as I think of things. Anyone with comments or suggestions, feel free to add them here!

The pirate study is rapidly coming to a close and I've been thinking for a week or so about what to do next. I've got lots of ideas, but...

How on earth do we follow what has been the most successful 3 weeks of homeschooling we've ever had?

I feel enormous pressure (entirely self-generated) to continue this amazing run of wonderful, enthusiastic, productive days with more of the same. Can we do it? Should I even try or was this just a fluke that will become a happy memory of what our homeschooling could be and yet will never be again despite all our best efforts?

Maybe I should just forget it and go back to default mode which for us means no unifying theme, just  the regular day-to-day stuff. It may not be exciting, but it's pleasant enough. At least I know he doesn't hate it.

This is what success breeds in me- fear of failure. Pretty pathetic, eh?

"Oh, come on, Theresa," I told myself. "At least give it a shot."

So, I made a list of  a dozen or so "topics" that I thought Superboy might like to delve into next. I thought really hard about the things that I knew interest him and put them on the list. I also came up with some ideas that I thought were unusual enough to spark curiosity. I showed the list to Superboy. You guessed it. Blank stare.

Back to the drawing board.

(He did seem interested in the Olympics, which I had as a choice, until I thought about it and remembered that we don't have TV so that really makes it hard to watch the Olympics. So that's out.)

Then I came up with World Architecture. He seems enthused. Not as enthused as he was about pirates, but, hey, who would be? I'll take what I can get.

So, that's what were off to next. I guess...