Our last unit study of the year turned out to be a great one! 

Using Art and Civilization: The Renaissance and The Usborne Book of World History as our main sources of information, we went on a quick journey through the Renaissance to prepare us for early modern history next year. 

Besides really important stops at the printing press, trade/exploration and Martin Luther, we chose to turn the main focus of the unit on famous Renaissance artists.  After watching this DVD, we spent one day studying each of the following artists and trying our hands at their art.  Some of our art ideas came from Discovering Great Artists by MaryAnn Kohl.  (I LOVE this book!)

Almost all of our artist information came from the Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artist Series by Mike Venezia.  My kids can't get enough of these books.  If I couldn't find a library book about the artist, we turned to the internet for research.  Here's a sampling of our projects.

Botticelli -art in the round

Michelangelo - "Sistene Chapel" art

Da Vinci - art from nature

Donatello - soap sculptures

Bruegel - landscapes

Tao-Chi - not your typical Renaissance artist, mind you.  But, an artist from China during the Renaissance time period.  I found this lesson on brush and ink paintings from Month-by-Month Masterpieces and couldn't pass it up! 

We also did a brief study of Shakespeare by reading A Child's Portrait of Shakespeare, William Shakespeare and the Globe, and Stage Fright on a Summer Night.  Our library had an entire series of Shakespeare DVD's, so we checked out Macbeth for a family flick night.  And for our listening pleasure in the car, we checked out Jim Weiss' Shakespeare For Children.

And so, that brings us to the end of another school year!  I have a box of Sensational Summer Sparks already started.  I'll share that with you soon! 

We're having so much fun studying Medieval history!  After reading about various aspects of life, we've been doing a project every day or two to go along with that aspect.  The picture above shows the kid's projects after learning about knights and armor.

Sorry, but after that picture the camera pooped out again.  The kiddos have also made a model of a castle and period costumes so far.  This week, we'll be preparing a medieval feast, setting a period table and eating with the manners of the time.  I'm hoping to be able to snap pictures here and there, so hopefully, I'll have more pictures to share by the end of the unit.

Studying Ancient Greece has been so much fun!  We could've spent many more days lingering in the Greek hillsides, but it's time to move on to Ancient Rome.  Here are some highlights from our week.

On top of the regular reading about Ancient Greece, map work, timelines and such, we did lots of hands-on activities, too.  My kids gain so much more from the "exciting stuff". 

The philosopher Aristotle is known as the father of the scientific method.  Thanks to JoAnn, we had a really fun and simple activity that taught the scientific method.

The Story of the World had a really fun sticker making project.  We colored Greek symbols, then made our own sticker solution to paint on the back of the symbols.  After it dried, all we had to do was lick and stick!

The kids made happy and sad drama masks and created their own play. 

Math one day was spent finding patterns for square numbers, triangular numbers, oblong numbers, and gnomon.  My worksheets came from a Teacher Created Materials unit on Ancient Greece.  You can probably do a quick search on the web for some free worksheets.  I bought my book for a quarter at a homeschool sale.  I wouldn't recommend buying it unless you can find it as cheap as I did.  Almost all the activities seemed to center around the gods and goddesses of Ancient Greece.  That's not something I wanted our family to focus on.   But, I did find a few things worth adding to the unit, so my quarter wasn't wasted!  :)

And we made Baklava.  Yummy!

We're on a tour of ancient history right now and loving it!  So far we've been through Ancient Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt.  I thought I'd share a few highlights of this week in Egypt since we had so much fun.

The best part of the week was mummifying a Ken doll.  Thanks Jamin for the idea!  Go to her post here for a full set of directions.  We prepared herbed oils earlier in the week and made the mummies as our final project on Friday.

Any spice covered with oil.  Shake everyday for a week.

Our poor Pharaoh before he realized death was imminent.

The project really didn't take that long.  What a memory!

We also enjoyed Sanyet Batates (which is basically a meat and potato stew) and unleavened bread.

To get in the real spirit of things, Mahayla dressed up in an Egyptian princess outfit.

Later, Mahayla came to me and said, "Look, Mom, Spider Man had a baby!"  I suppose Caleb decided dressing up looked like fun.  Hmmm....I don't remember Spider Man in any of our Ancient Egyptian readings.

A good friend of mine knew that I used Mystery of History Vol I this year and asked me what I thought about it.  She's considering it vs. TruthQuest.  Since my answer to her turned out to be a "book", I thought I might as well post it here in case anyone else has the same sort of question.

My Answer:

Hmmm...I think I would have liked MoH more IF I hadn't been using The Child's Story Bible, too, this year.  It's a very thorough, chronological Bible (wonderful, by the way!)  Anyway, MoH includes much of the same information, along with a spattering of world history.  The only differences were the extra activities and timeline options I had with MoH. 

Now, if I hadn't been going through the Bible chronologically, I probably would have really enjoyed MoH.  It does give a great perspective on what was going on in the world at the same time certain Bible events happened.  At the same time, though, I felt like MoH lacked in "good" maps and premade activites.  Simple maps and some good activity ideas were there, but I still had to do a lot of work planning on my own.  With Eli, I don't have that kind of time anymore!  :)

We stopped using it about mid-way through the year.  I'm opting for more of a unit study approach to world and American history right now.  Lapbooks, History Pockets, Unit studies. 

To be honest, I'm just getting tired of dragging out subjects that I think can be pretty well covered in a much shorter time period.  When I did Story of the World for 4 years, we did history 2-3 times a week all year.  With these unit studies, I'm able to cover much of the same material in a 2-3 week unit.  MoH was 2-3 times a week, too, sometimes more.  The lessons didn't take very long, but we weren't engaged and excited like I had hoped. 

One other thing, I believe there are 2 MoH volumes out right now.  She plans 3 more, but won't have them finished in time for me to go through her program completely.  I think she plans to put out one every 2-3 years or something like that. 

One thing I do plan to do to enhance our unit studies - I'm probably going to buy the Story of the World stories on cds so the kids can listen through them again, especially Caleb.  I may even add in a fun activity here and there, but WON'T do the whole huge lesson thing again.  Even though I loved that program, I ended up spending tons of time planning and preparing it, too.

I haven't seen TruthQuest enough to compare it to MoH.  I like the concept of it, but it, too, seems like more planning that I care to do right now.  I've been pretty much sold on the Hands of a Child and Knowledge Box Central lapbooking units lately.  Most of the info and copies I need are there for me.  I just have to beef it up a bit with a few library books.  The finished products are beautiful, too!   For Ancient History, I plan to use the Ancient Civilization History Pockets from Evan Moor. 

Truth be told, I'm probably just getting tired of waiting so long for closure.  Ha Ha. I want to tackle something and get it over with.  Mahayla's a lot like me.  If something drags on too long, her interest fades big time.  By the end of a year-long program, we're both ready for it to just be over with!

If you have an opinion that might be helpful for my friend, feel free to comment.