Update: Quest for the Middle Ages

Just a little update on how things are going with WinterPromise's Quest for the Middle Ages this year with E13...

This has been a fabulous program for learning the history of the early church which he is thoroughly enjoying. I'm enjoying it along with him since we read together a lot of it and he narrates to me what is going on in the things I do not read directly with him.

Although WinterPromise provides a lot of great reading, I find that I am modifying the other assignments and expectations for the program. I'm not sure if it's because E13 is not all that jazzed about projects or because we aren't immersed in this as a family.

In addition to small daily written assignments, he's been doing projects and cultural investigations. Above is one of the projects where he mapped the missionary journeys of Paul and had some trivia questions with it. The assignment was to make an interactive map of Paul's missionary journeys.

I find E13 really prefers pencil and paper assignments over messy and involved projects. So, I try to encourage him to stretch a little sometimes, but in the end the paper pencil always wins out.

I've had E13 doing some of his own notebooking pages, so the one above was an assignment to write a newspaper telling about Nero the Roman Emperor and his poor behavior. I was pretty happy with the results of his creativity there.

Some assignments are just out of Mystery of History and ask for summaries on what he's read. Other times he has to take a quiz or answer a set of questions.

I am not at all impressed with the science portion yet- speaking from the point of view of a certified biology teacher. I keep hanging in there because the course is Human Body and Forensics and we are just about to start the Forensic portion. I think the first half of the year is all about getting the backstory on the human body so when things turn to forensics, the student will have some prior knowledge. Unfortunately, reading and coloring pages is not my idea of a great biology program. So, I've changed things up there as well in hopes of doing some more assignments with it.

The strength of this program is in the reading selections and resource books. It breaks down all these materials into daily assignments with other week long or three week long choices. There is opportunity for the whole family to work together on the Quest from 4th grade up, but since we are FIAR core users, I prefer to let those graduated from FIAR head off on their own. It has taken some shuffling on my part to do this, but I think it better meets the needs of each student.

It's a great choice for a unit study family as they transition from tidy units to a more traditional program. I'm guessing that someone like E13 would love to just read and not worry about tidy increments, but with other kids the break down might be very helpful.

So, we keep trudging along being faithful to the structure as best we can. The content is fabulous and the resources are top notch. We've been doing a lot of historical fiction reading with this and that's been a lot of fun for us. It's easy to get behind though because it requires a stiff pace!

More updates as we get further along!

Castle Construction

I haven't posted much about it so far, but E13 has been using WinterPromise Quest for the Middle Ages this year. We have finally seen the end of the Roman Empire and have really begun the Middle Ages portion of the curriculum. We've found that we've had to modify some of the projects for various reasons, but we are moving along. Recently, we have been discussing how and why castles were made. So, E13 has been working on a castle model.

This is an Usborne paper castle kit- I'm letting him do it all on his own and if something goes wrong I have a few spare kits. Not sure where I picked some up, but they are in our collection.

The gate house with the drawbridge and portcullis

E13 loves all the reading that goes with this program. We have selections for read alouds as well as sections of various books along the way. It's following Mystery of History Volume 2. We do a lot of reading aloud, along with reading on his own plus written assignments, projects and a timeline. This has been a great study for transitioning from a unit study approach to a more traditional schooling approach. As much as we are enjoying the curriculum, I think most of its value is in the reading schedule with the resources it pulls together. It has inspired me to continue to put together my own materials for even high school courses. I will share some of the other work that E13 has done with WinterPromise. It's been really nice to have that independent study list for him as well as reading and working together on chronological history of the Middle Ages.