Five Little Things : Surprises

We are travelling at the moment, visting friends and family. I like to have my camera with me on holiday and take shots of the things we see around us. Especially the surprises like this fantastic street art Maya and I stumbled across or the red sky last night predicting shepherd's delight and another beautiful sunny day this morning. Happy Sunday! We're off for a bit more strolling around taking pictures and hopefully a visit to St Etienne's museum of Art and Industry.

Unexpected Art

Another bird

Big Bird Watching

The Sky at Night

Night Sky through the Window

Homeschooling : How to make a Roman Soldier's Helmet

Noah has been fascinated by the Romans for quite some time now. As I posted recently we've been working on a Roman Fort model as well as and Ampitheatre. We've also watched lots of documentaries about the Roman Emprire and read lots of books. So it was no surprise when during are one on one time last week he asked to make a helmet to go with his Roman Centurion's costume. 
 

Noah trying on his Roman Centurion's Helmet

I did a quick five minutes of online research and then launched freewheeled it. Here's what we did...

Roman Centurion's Helmet Tutorial

• First I freehand drew the different parts we would need to make the helmet onto some cardboard (from a box). I got inspiration for the pieces here, you could print their templates and then trace them onto cardboard.

Cutting out the pieces

• Next we painted all the pieces with silver paint (metallic for kids from a supermarket). You could also use gold or grey. We used a roller to apply the paint and because our box was white we only needed one coat. We painted the crest section red and then cut into it like for a fringe to give a feathered effect.

Painting the helmet parts silver

The crest is painted red

• Once all the parts were painted and dried, we began to assemble the helmet. First we stuck the cheek guards to the semi-circular front piece. We then added the rectangular and pointed front piece. We also had to add on an extra rectangular piece to hide some annoying lettering on our box which the paint didn't cover even with two coats. We used staples to join the pieces together as they hold better than glue.

Sticking the pieces together

• Finally we attached the two long rectangular strips to the front piece and adjusted them to fit around Noah's head. Well perhaps one or two other people might have tried the helmet on first!

Avé César !

Five Little Things : Promenons nous dans le bois ...

Lotta was the only child at her pony class on Saturday and so we were treated to a wonderful walk in the woods with her teacher Jennifer. Lots of cross for Lotta, up and down over big bumps and a wonderful photography opportunity for me and Noah. 

Tree Bark

The bumps...

A beautiful friendship begins

Pine Cone Stars

The forest floor

Homeschooling History

Noah at Rockingham Castle

As you may remember from previous posts, Noah really likes building things. When I discussed what he'd like to learn about this year, most of his ideas began with the word 'make'. So when we are learning about history making stuff has become an important part of how we do things. Making swords, daggers, shields and jewellery, castles and scrolls have all been useful projects to bring history alive. The kids also like to dress the part, Noah has a Roman Centurian costume as well as a shield we made following instructions from this book. Of course I don't have a single photo!

Today I want to share with you a project we've been working on for quite some time with the help of a kit from Usborne Books (see here). They have a series of wonderful cut-out model making books which all begin with the words Make This. We have several of these, Make this Roman Ampitheatre, Make this Medieval Castle but today I'm going to talk a bit about Make this Roman Fort.

Book Cover

We have been working on this one for quite a few weeks. These kits contain a well made series of templates to cut out and assemble. They involve a lot of cutting and have been a great way for Noah to improve his fine motor skills with scissors. There is a number scheme and instructions to follow for putting everything together. The instructions are clear and concise but some of the assembling is very fiddly. Noah is seven and needs help from an adult to follow the directions and stick the pieces together successfully. We have experimented with several glues (prit stick and liquid glue) and have come to the conclusion that the most important thing is to be patient! Holding those pieces together as long as possible is the key. 

The fort coming together

While we've been cutting out and building we've also been watching a variety of short documentaries about what life was like as a Roman soldier, as well as Roman engineering and how they built their forts. Noah has also been really interested in Roman battles and their military tactics. 

Close up on the soldier's barracks

Videos like this one which use modern computer technology to reconstruct buildings from the past helped us get a real feel for what a Roman fort would have been like. It also helped that we visited Hadrian's wall and the fort Vindolanda last summer.
 

A very wet August day at Vindolanda

We're planning to visit some Roman sites here in France later in the year. 

We've also been reading a lot of books of course. Including quite a lot about the Gaulois and the battles between Vercingetorix and Caesar. We get a lot of them from the library which means they're mostly in French hence the interest in les Gaules! We did come across this series though which is similar in style to Horrible Histories which we also own and which the kids really liked - You wouldn't want to be a gladiator! (link).