It's been a while! We have been finishing up our viking study. I had no idea what we were getting into with this study. They did so much and traveled everywhere and I was so surprised that they help establish settlements in Russia. Just a fascinating group of people. Two other resources we liked for our viking study were D'aulaire's book Leif The Lucky and Nova's The Vikings.
The boys made long boats and polymer clay warriors for the focus table. During the week there have been villages set up with blocks as well. They really know how to play out what they are learning!!
Tobin is still in the process of setting up an alien focus at the table. So another trip to the library to check out books on their next set of interests. They are really diggin the focus table and I love watching it change throughout the week. Sometimes I walk into the room to some pretty hilarious scenes.
The pokeberry juice that Tobin and I sealed up three weeks ago is all ready and fermented. It smells like wine and has such a pretty color. Did you know they used pokeberry ink to write the Declaration of Independence? We sat and played with this for a long time today. A quill just feels so different. Smooth and you have to be careful. If you are interested I think in some areas you can still find the berries. We just picked about two cups of them. Then put them in a muslin tea bag. Then we squeezed with gloved hands. After we got all the juice we could get out of them we put the juice in a canning jar and let it sit for three weeks. You can tell when it's ready because it will smell like wine. Here's a link to show you how to cut a feather for a quill.
Wishing you all the best of autumn days! Much love from the Kopp family!
I love Vikings too. If you've not had enough of them you might want to check out the Vikings of Middle England website http://www.vikingsofmiddleengland.co.uk/# and Regia Angalorum http://www.regia.org/ Both reinactment groups are wonderful to experience and provide a lot of education materials.
Posted by: Sarah Head | October 23, 2009 at 07:02 AM