| While my younger daughter did Adam of the Road with our studies of the medieval/middles ages the older boys did The Trumpeter of Krakow which is about medieval Poland. It was a recommended reader both with our Mystery of History II and Christian Kids study Chemistry curriculums.
The story has a very interesting history behind the plot which is covered in the prologue. It seems there truly was a broken trumpet call the story retells and it plays a big part of the story. I found it interesting how the author used this history to create his story. It sounds like a writing assignment, oh, but that would be a different blog, back to the subject…
It makes sense for history but why was this book suggested as a reader for our Chemistry curriculum? Well the answer lies in one of the lesser characters. Our hero befriends a girl and her father is an Alchemist. They live upstairs from his family. It’s a great starting point for study in how Chemistry was actually begun. In medieval times Alchemists were searching for how to make gold with lots of experiments. Just like in any field I suppose there are good and bad characters and we do incur a bad character here.
The father of the girl, Kruetz has a student who in fact does not have pure motives and seeks to control him. He tries to put him under hypnosis. This is not at all portrayed as a positive thing and gives a great chance for you to discuss it with your children. It is really not the main part of the story but I encourage you to read it for yourself if this concerns you.
Trumpeter of Krakow leads to study of some of the maybe not quite as obvious things about the middle ages. For instance in my review on Adam of the Road I noted that it was a good starting point for studying all the typical “occupations” of the medieval time like knight, squire, peasant, church positions etc… With Trumpeter of Krakow you can study some “different” things about the time like Alchemy, Architecture, Cossaks, Copernicus and Dante to name a few.
Ideas to go with these subjects are all suggested in the Pen and Paper sections or Projects sections of the Total Language Plus guide. We chose to do the maps, study architecture and report on the Cossaks. Below are some of the links we used to find our information.
Have fun with it!
http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/europe/printpage/europemain.htm map of Europe
http://geography.about.com/library/blank/blxpoland.htm outline map of Poland
http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/europe/lgcolor/plcolor.htm Poland map, shows all but Kiev
http://www.mapsofworld.com/ukraine/ukraine-outline-map.html outline map of Ukraine
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/maps/europe/ukraine/ map of Ukraine showing Kiev
Just a word of caution searching Ukraine, there are many that come up with women as brides when you search Ukraine. What I saw were just offers to write to men and modest pictures but there could be some other sites with more offensive materials.
http://www.historylink101.com/lessons/art_history_lessons/ma/romanesque_architecture.htm Romanesque architecture lesson and pictures
http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/medieval/architecture/gothic.htm short description of gothic architecture with pictures
http://www.athenapub.com/14gothic-architecture.htm more in depth of gothic with diagrams
http://architecture.about.com/od/periodsstyles/g/renaissance.htm renaissance architecture small overview
http://architecture.about.com/od/periodsstyles/ig/Historic-Styles/Renaissance.htm more on renaissance with links to famous buildings in the style
Cossacks history as well as today http://www.cossacks.kiev.ua/
Copernicus information http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Copernicus.html
Dante-http://www.archive.org/details/divine_comedy_librivox complete audio of Comedy in sections! Excellent!
Petrarch http://petrarch.petersadlon.com/petrarch.html | 
