Tag Archives: homeschool

10 Days in Europe game and how to make your own.

02/13/2015 Danielle Huddleston Leave a comment

My youngest got 10 Days in Europe for his birthday last month and we really like it!

I am so excited to work on my geography!

I am really bad at remembering where places are…

In the game you have to plan a trip through Europe and you need it to connect via land, water, or by air.

Such a fun game!

After playing this game and then seeing the Race Across the States game over at Deceptively Educational, I decided to try to make my own game.

First up was “5 days in the Middle East”

I got the map, here.

You can get the free printable cards I made, here.

We all drew 5 cards, laid them out in front of us, and tried to travel to countries next to each for 5 days.

For your turn, you could choose from the discard pile or the deck and switch out the cards you did not need.

Just like “10 Days in Europe.”

This game was easy, fun, and a great way to figure out where countries are located!

We have been reading G.A. Henty’s book “The Young Carthaginian A Story of The Times of Hannibal“

It is a really good book to learn about Hannibal Barca!

The boys groan everytime I stop reading!

I wanted them to get a better idea of the route he had to take to get to Rome so I printed this map from the Wikipedia page.

This is to attribute the author.

“Hannibal route of invasion” by Frank Martini. Cartographer, Department of History, United States Military Academy – The Department of History, United States Military Academy [1]. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hannibal_route_of_invasion.gif#mediaviewer/File:Hannibal_route_of_invasion.gif

I then made these cards of the places he went, free printable here.

I printed them all on card stock.

The goal of the game was to follow Hannibal’s route to Rome and then cross the Mediterranean to Carthage first.

We each started with one card and placed it in the correct spot in front of us for our journey.

To win you need, Spain, Gaul, Alps, Rome, Mediterranean, Carthage, in that order.

You draw one card from the discard pile or the deck each turn until someone gets all 6 cards in the right order.

The possibilities are endless!

I am excited to have some fun with geography!

Homeschooling

Heron or Hero of Alexandria

02/09/2015 Danielle Huddleston 2 Comments

Finding books on Heron(or Hero) of Alexandria was next to impossible.

I am not sure why because he was an amazing inventor!

This man made a steam powered machine 2ooo years ago!

We started our study of him with a Modern Marvels Episode about him.

It is Season 11 Episode 78 called “Ancient Discoveries: Heron of Alexandria”

It was very interesting!

Next we watched this video on youtube on an Easy Hero’s Engine, here.

We decided to build a steam engine ourselves after watching it.

The first step was to buy some pop!

My boys liked this step.

You use a pin to carefully puncture the can.

You need two holes, one on each side of the can.

Our cans did not drain all of the way but it did not seem to affect the experiment.

You add water after draining the pop out.

If you watch the video he will give you more information on how to prepare the can.

You need the holes to be angled.

All we had to do was put pin back in after we were done draining it and then push it to one side.

You DO NOT pop the top of the can.

The tab is going to help you spin your can.

You loop a string under the tab.

This first try was a fail.

The heat from our little hobo stove was not constant enough to heat the water in the can.

We tried it over our stove top but the spinner (from fishing tackle) we were using did not allow it to spin.

Thankfully my husband came home and told me I could just make the string longer.

We added a long piece of fishing line and it worked!

The steam comes out of the two angled holes and causes the can to spin!

Our very own Aeolipile!

Next up we made a Heron’s Fountain from this tutorial.

Our supplies.

The building process was a little difficult for my 7&8yr old and needed a bit of tweaking.

We had to use several different drill bits to drill the holes before we found the right size.

You want it to be tight so you do not have leaks.

You also want to spring for the sturdier water bottles.

It is hard to drill holes into the thin flimsy ones like we got.

I put a board under the caps to drill holes into them.

Our first attempt was a fail (I have come to accept that this happens often and try to plan for the fact our science experiments might not work).

We checked everything and reread the tutorial several times but we were just not getting it.

I finally read this article on Heron’s Fountain on wikipedia and understood!

You need to start with the middle bottle full of water and the bottom one empty.

When you then pour water into the top, the water fills the bottom bottle, the air from the bottom bottle is pushed up into the middle bottle, which then pushes it out of the tube on top, creating a fountain!

When the bottom bottle is full then your fountain will stop.

This is the easiest way we could figure out how to refill the middle bottle.

Unscrew the bottom bottle and hold the longest tube closed.

Put water in the top while holding the top tube under water.

This causes the water to fill the middle bottle.

Then you are ready to start again!

If you are wondering why our water is blue in some of these, we added a few drop of food coloring once to watch where the water was going.

I highly recommend this!

It was really cool to watch the food coloring travel through the tubes!

If you have older kids then you could make this Gin Pole as well!

He was a fascinating and brilliant man!

I am so glad that we learned about him!

Homeschooling

Qin Shi Huang, Confucius, The Great Wall, Hannibal, and Rome!

02/04/2015 Danielle Huddleston Leave a comment

My boys really like the Magic Tree House Series and have read “Day of the Dragon King” by Mary Pope Osborne several times.

It is about China’s first Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the guy that commissioned the Terracotta Army.

The Value Tales book has a story about Confucius that would be good for young children.

The boys really like the Isabel Soto Graphic Library books and this one on the Great Wall of China makes it very interesting.

We watched many of the different Engineering an Empire series, this one was on China.

Next we studied Rome and Hannibal.

There was very little information on Hannibal available for children so we watched the Engineering an Empire on Carthage(where Hannibal came from) and it talked a lot about his father and him, then we watched some videos online.

The History Channel has one, here.

Hannibal was a very hard man. Just beware of that before you let young kids watch anything about him.

Rome was pretty hard also though.

*Update: We have been reading “The Young Carthaginian: A Story in the times of Hannibal” by G.A. Henty and I highly reccomend it!

It really shows you the brilliance of Hannibal and is a great story from the viewpoint of Carthage.

It would probably be best suited for 10+ but I am reading it out loud to my 7&8yr old.

“The Eagles have flown” is a great piece of historical fiction about Rome in the time of Julius Caesar.

We learned more about him later but it is sometimes nice for the boys to hear about someone in advance.

They are much more interested in them then.

Of course we included two of the “You wouldn’t want to…” series!

Those books make history fun to read about!

Also we watched the Engineering an Empire about Rome.

If you have young kids that you want to introduce to these ancient civilizations without anything inappropriate for their age then I would recommend the “Ancient Civilizations for Children” series.

They are a very child friendly version of history and short.

The boys built a Roman Ballista to go with our study of Rome.

Of course even though they started it when we were wrapping up our study in December, they did not actually finish it until January…

I got them this kit from Amazon.

Although I did like this kit, it was a little too difficult for them to get that actual tension coils set up and they are very touchy!

You have to really fine tune them which was difficult for even me to do!

Also, you really need to get those pieces lined up!

I let them glue them together and they were not careful enough so we had to take it apart!

Thankfully holding it over a pot of steaming water does loosen the glue!

YAY!

So if this happens to you, get a pot of water boiling.

They still enjoyed getting to do something hands on to go with our study of Rome though.

If I can I always try to give them something to build or play to go with our history.

Do you like history more when it is hands on?