Wrap Up: Duchess Bakes a Cake

Duchess Bakes a Cake was such a fun row! Our FIAR units had started to feel a little redundant lately (settings either in large European cities or in rural USA, lots of overlap in science and language arts topics, etc) but this one had a totally different feel.  It was just what we needed during the February homeschooling doldrums! Here's what we did with it:

Social Studies:
Knights, castles, archery, catapults, kings, queens, the feudal system, and all things Middle Ages! We had so much fun reading library book after library book about Medieval Times.  We spent a day doing the activity recommended by this blogger on the feudal system.

We built popsicle stick and rubber band catapults.

Instructions here and here.

Ready, Aim, FIRE!

We also made some popsicle stick and Q-tip bows and arrows, although the kids didn't like these as much.

Instructions here.

We spent many days dressed in our knight and king costumes waging war on invisible foes.

Langauge arts:
We studied alliteration.  I read them the book If You Were Alliteration, and asked them if they knew an example of alliteration in the Duchess. Jonathan identified it immediately! "A lovely light luscious delectable cake!" They each composed an alliterative sentence about themselves and then copied them for handwriting that day.

Art: Drama! The kids acted out the story of the Duchess while I read it aloud. This was the most fun part of the row, in their opinion.  Every time we act out a story, it is enormously popular. I need to remember to do that more often!

Science: We briefly touched on nutrition as suggested in the manual, but we didn't do as much with it as I had planned.  I suspect we'll have another opportunity down the road.

Toward the end of this row, Grandma and Grandpa came in town for Mardi Gras.  One day while they were here, the kids and David made a cake to finish off our study.  I'm not sure it was lovely, light, or luscious, since gluten-free cakes are generally pretty dense, but it was tasty! (I forgot to take pictures, though.)

(added) hey! Grandma took pics of cake-making!

Go-along books that we enjoyed:

We have found two new family favorites in Good Night, Good Knight and The Seven Silly Eaters.  I suspect we'll be owners of both of those before long. That has really been one of the most fun parts of Five in a Row for us, meeting so many other wonderful story books along the way!

Another couple of pictures from the row:

We have a new family favorite board game--No Stress Chess!  This a teaching version of chess that removes the strategy element by having you draw a card and move the piece illustrated on the card.  The cards explain the moves that each piece can make.  The kids love it!  There are instructions for how to add in the strategy element slowly, as the players get used to the the different pieces and their moves. We have loved it!

Since our weather has been warming up, Jono had asked to visit one of our local parks, Storyland, where the plantings are all from nursery rhymes and fairy tales.  The kids enjoyed playing kings and queens on the throne in the castle in the middle of the park. It was a great day to go, too--we practically had the place to ourselves!

Super fun row, just the change in pace we needed, and next we're on to a "cat book" by Charlie's request--Papa Piccolo!

A few Mardi Gras pictures, just for fun:

We took the grandparents to the zoo, and they were brave enough to climb down the spider web at Monkey Hill.

"Throw me something, Mister!"