Medieval Unit Study

Having two children with four years and various abilities between them, makes homeschooling a fantastic journey for me. Despite being four years, almost to the day, apart, my children have some similar interests; not identical, but definitely similar. One of their common interests is King Arthur. My daughter loves the thought of chivalrous knights and fair maidens riding horses. My son longs to be a knight on horse fighting a dragon. See what I mean? Similar, not identical.
This makes Social Studies pretty fun for us. This year my daughter is spending her school year learning about various countries around the world. My son is spending his year learning about the various warrior culture associated with the part of the world she studies. So far we studied Mongolia and Genghis Khan; Japan and ninjas/samurai; Scandinavian countries and vikings. Our next trip will be to the British Isles in order to study knights and castles of the Middle Ages.
As a setup project for the unit study, my kids have been given jobs as travel agents. My daughter is in charge of designing a tri-fold brochure all about England (then she'll do Ireland and Scotland). My son will be responsible for creating a post card for each country, as well as "trading cards" of famous people, indigenous animals and the flag of each country.
Once we get through the current day in these places, we will travel back in time to see what they were like during the Middle Ages. I am going to be putting together the nuts and bolts of the unit each afternoon while they are off playing. I do know that I am going to be looking to find a way to make the Unit Study fun and engaging for each of them at their own level. I'm thinking that my son will complete his study by making a lapbook and my daughter by notebooking her way through. I will post updates and pictures as we go along!

The Teaching of the 12 - Part 1

For the past couple of years my husband has been trying to get me to pick up the book, "The Teaching of the 12" by Tony Jones. I'll admit that I tried reading once, but just was not interested at the time. So I put it down and left it down. Recently, however, I picked it up again to see what the book is all about.

According to the back of the book,

The Didache, an early handbook of an anonymous Christian community, "is the most important book you've never heard of." It spells out a way of life for Jesus-followers, including how to love one another, how to practice the eucharist, and how to take in wandering prophets.

So, the plan is to blog briefly on each section of the Didache as I read it. I read Jones' introduction, which for some reason, struck me as more interesting this time around than last. Who knows why? Sometimes you're ready for something and sometimes you're not, I guess!

Introduction
In the introduction, Jones describes what the church looked like in the time that this document is assumed to have been written as, "a small, if growing, band of believers, spreading across the Roman Empire. A blend of educated and uneducated, female and male, poor and rich, slaves and free, Jew and Gentile..." who had to keep their new religion "under wraps." Already this description has me intrigued. To think of so many different types of people all having this one thing in common is kind of interesting to me. It makes me think of my own church (which, admittedly, I love dearly) and makes me wonder what it might look like with such a diverse group of congregants....
The rest of the Intro is the story of how the Didache came to be in our hands today. A brief and fun history lesson. :) The best line in this section is what hit home for me: "The real power of the Didache is its ability to remind us what is truly important in Christianity: showing the love of Jesus to the world."

Now that is something I could enjoy reading.