Preparing for the Enlightenment

Our history co-op is finally getting going for the year, though a bit later than usual. We cover the eras of history in chronological order, so the Enlightenment is our present focus. Since we have so many children between the five families involved (27 children) and the age range is so vast (17 years down to the babies), we split the group into two, with the olders doing more in depth study with more rigorous reading and writing and the youngers doing more story-based, hands-on learning. The picture is of M. and B. working on preparing the assignment that they need to have done for the first class tomorrow...they had to look up ~67 key people from the period, listing dates and major works (if any), then they had to create a timeline for those people. The timeline has ended up being about 12 1/2 feet. Each student will then give a presentation to the group on two of the people as well as a two presentations on key events. We also do a literature component which involves reading major works from the period. This year it will be Pilgrim's Progress, Gulliver's Travels, and Robinson Crusoe.

Here are the baby girls being entertained by the timeline work:

L. (with her soft dolly)

G. (who refused to smile no matter what I did)


And since we're talking about school-type stuff, here is the creation that K. made yesterday while playing with the Cuisinaire Rods. It's a person and an oven, of course.