Year Two

We spent the majority of our second year working
on a Greece and Rome unit study. It was pretty spread out through the year, as I put more emphasis on the math, reading, and writing studies. But, we did get a lot out of it. We took a few field trips.

Once again, living in Turkey came in very handy as we were able to find great places to get some hands on learning.




Our favorite local spot, Anavarza castle, provided a lot of great opportunites to include a personal lesson in using a slingshot, a walk through a real victory gate, several aqueducts, and Roman baths
that we could jump into and touch.

The boys enjoyed searching for hidden treasure. At the base of the mountain is an ancient city that dates back to Roman rule. There are still coins from the many eras that followed buried under the dirt. Just walking around, we found several fun items of interest.





The treck up to the castle was definitely a long one, but well worth it. From the top, we could see all the ancient buildings, roads, and even an amphitheater still half buried on the hillside.


Walking through each piece of this ancient city made me seriously wonder what it would have been like to live in those days. The terrain was almost unbearable to walk on let alone to farm in. We were shown the remains of a great arena and the spot carved out of the hillside where the ruler of the time would have sat to watch over the games. It was all there. All the things we read about but don't ever get to see with our own eyes.

During Christmas time, I was in charge of putting together something for the kids at church to do. We've all seen the traditional Christmas plays that have the manger scene, sheep, angels, and all the trappings. Very cute, but I decided to go with a different idea.

I had ordered some books through Voice of the Martyrs, and thought that one of them looked like a fun idea for a Christmas play. It's called The Story of Saint Nicholas of Myra: More than Reindeer and a Red Suit and is part of the Holiday Heroes Collection.

I used this book to write a play about who St. Nicholas really was and how he lived out his faith in a radical way. Of course, the costumes were a whole different ball of wax. But, with a little creativity and some will power, we made it work. I made David try on one of the Roman guard costumes to make sure it would work and look somewhat believable. It just happened to fit in with our home school curriculum and timing. Weird how stuff like that falls in our laps at the right time!

We also attempted a Roman feast, wearing togas and other traditional garb. It was a strange meal when we first looked at the recipe, but everyone really enjoyed it.

Once again, we used the Evan-Moor History Pockets book to supplement some arts and other more hands on things. Another book I found that was fun to use was Hands-On Heritage: Ancient Greece Activity Book.

I also found some of these other books that look helpful and quite stimulating:

History of Civilization Series by Milliken Publishing Co.

Ancient Civilizations by Instructional Fair, Inc.

ISBN 1-56822-060-X

My Book of Mazes: Around the World by Kumon Publishing

Draw and Write Through History: Greece and Rome

David made some laurel wreath crowns for us to wear. They didn't stay on well, so they worked only for pictures.






The kids were a bit eager to get out of costume after this whole event. They were pieced together and pinned in some strange places. They were good sports about it, though. It was the waiting for dinner to be ready that made it so hard to bear, I think.

We got a lot of good photos out of the deal. They were so good about posing for us!! Morgan's little dress was the cutest part. She modeled and posed like she was on a runway! I had fun doing up her hair with ribbons and she looked like such the little Roman queen.

My costume didn't turn out nearly as wonderfully as hers. We really just dug through the fabric box in the closet and put together whatever we could find. Somehow, there was enough for everyone. I'm purposely leaving out the photos of me. They're not the slightest bit cute.








We used the Crafts from the Past series again for this unit. We're craft freaks, what can I say? Our model Trojan Horse turned out beautifully. It was a little time consuming, but makes kind of a nice little decoration for the house.

The only other unit we did for science and history was a unit on weather. It was another fun one, full of hands on things to do.

We made a lot of weather instruments.

A wind vane

A thermometer

A barometer


We also did some charting of the weather and learning on how different aspects of weather behave.

A cheap little instrument that we got as a gift was this little Tornado Tube. The kids in the neighborhood all wanted to try it out and see how it worked.

Year two came to a close and we prepared to bring our middle child into the official home school mix. We also prepared to move back to the US and looked through all the regulations for our new home state. It didn't seem possible that we had just put away two whole years of home schooling. Looking back, it was whirlwind tour. (pun intended)