Roman Mosaic Stepping Stones

We have been wanting to make stepping stones for our bird garden all summer! As we finish up our study of the Romans, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to "kill two birds with one stone" (shh! Don't tell my bird-loving boys that I used that phrase! They prefer to say "hatch two birds from one egg"!)


Roman mosaic in Italica, Spain


We had so much fun with this project! It definitely gave us a greater appreciation for Roman mosaic art, as it is so much harder than it looks!



We purchased our mosaic glass from Rainbow Resource (one pack of primary colors and one pack of earth tones), and we used ready-to-mix stepping stone kits from Walmart. I had originally planned to purchase concrete, but when a friend gave the boys these kits as a birthday gift, I knew this would be perfect for our project!

Here is what we did:

1) Since these stones were for our bird garden, the boys' vision was that each stone would represent a different bird. I printed off simple images of our chosen birds online. You do NOT want detailed drawings for this project. Instead, choose simple line drawings. I found most of what I needed at Enchanted Learning. I printed the images on cardstock instead of paper, to give a little more weight to the paper for the later steps in this process.





2) Lay out the mosaic glass on top of the coloring page, following the pattern as best you can. This was delicate work that called for patience and a steady hand. My 7 year old was able to do it, though it took him longer than the older boys. Our four year old had no patience for this process, so he just made a free-form snake.




3) Once you have laid out your pattern and you are satisfied with it, carefully take masking tape or painters tape and lay it gently over the top of the glass, overlapping the strips of tape until every part of the pattern is covered. Once you have the tape in place, press down firmly to make sure it sticks to the glass, trying to avoid sticking it to the coloring sheet underneath.

If you printed your images on cardstock instead of printer paper, it will be easier to peel the tape away from the paper later should it stick. Also, you will definitely need a not-so-sticky tape for this, so don't try it with Scotch tape!




4) Take a few more strips of tape and layer them on top of the first pieces, going in the opposite direction. This will help ensure that your image does not separate into two or three pieces when you try to transfer it.



5) Once your mosaic image is well taped, gently turn it over onto your hand or onto another piece of cardstock. Now the tape will be on the bottom and you will be able to see the glass tile again. Set the mosaic tile image aside while you mix up your stepping stones.



6) Follow the directions on your stone kit (or find directions online if you are doing this the "old fashioned way", from scratch!).




7) Once you've mixed up your plaster of paris or concrete mixture and formed it into a stone, it is time to transfer the mosaic pattern onto your stone. Carefully turn it over and use the tape to gently press the glass into the soft concrete. Once the mosaic image is stuck to the stepping stone, carefully peel away the tape. Check the mosaic glass carefully to make sure each piece was pressed firmly into the stone so that nothing will fall off when the stone hardens. You'll only have a few minutes for this process, so work quickly! We found that pressing on the mosaic glass with our fingers transferred some cement to the top side of the glass....trial and error taught us to use a thin instrument like the end of a paintbrush or a pencil to gently work the glass into place.



8) Set your stones aside overnight to dry and enjoy your new mosaics!



We made eight different stones in this fashion and it was really very easy and quite fun!

Roman Feast

We kicked off our back-to-school hands on projects with a Roman Feast this week. We ended the school year studying Ancient Rome and picked up where we left off with a look at how the Roman Empire fell.

Things are crazy busy right now, so I wanted to keep this feast simple. I managed to pull it off without much planning at all, using ingredients I already had in the house. Of course, we recycled the sheets used in our Egyptian Feast and our Greek Feast to make Roman tunics. I simply cut some sheets from Goodwill in half and cut a hole for their head and two holes for arms...voila, instant (if not perfectly authentic) Greek chitons. These also served as our Roman tunics. If you start with the Egyptian Feast you can use the same sheets for all 3 costumes, and I found that a couple of large sheets were enough to serve the entire family with some judicious cutting.

I used tablecloths, sheets and (for my little guy) a table runner to make the togas that drape over their shoulders. I wore a tablecloth also, as a simple cloak.

Click here to watch a brief video that shows how to put on an authentic Roman toga.

We set up our Triclinium table again using the leaves from our dining room and kitchen tables and surrounding them with couch cushions. I learned a lesson during our Greek Feast and covered the cushions with bedsheets this time, in case of spills!

For dinner, I decided to serve a mix of some traditional foods of Ancient Rome that we still eat today, as well as some fun "make-believe" dishes which the Romans ate but we would never touch. We pretended to be wealthy so that we could enjoy several different dishes.

The boys thought it was pretty fun to eat Roasted Doormice (chicken legs) and Peacock Nuggets (Anytizers cordon blue nuggets). We learned that the Ancient Romans liked Omelets with honey, so we tried that, too. Side dishes included bread, grapes, olives, nuts, apples and salad. I did not make a dessert for this meal, though the Romans did eat desserts at their feasts.

I recommend waiting until near the end of the feast to inform boys that belching was considered polite at Roman feasts.

This meal did not take any more time than a normal dinner would have, aside from the few minutes spent setting up the Triclinium table and getting the costumes together. The side dishes were very fast and simple, and I made the omelet quickly on the stovetop as the chicken legs finished cooking.

I found some interesting notes about Roman cooking, including this chicken recipe, here. The people who wrote this site took their recipes from an old Roman cookbook, which was written by a Roman gourmet named Apicius in the 1st century and added to over time. Eventually an editor published this cookbook in the 4th century and titled it after Apicius. Much of what we know about Roman cooking seems to be taken from this record.



Here are the recipes I used:

Roasted Doormice (aka Baked Chicken Legs)

Put the following ingredients in a large ziploc bag:

1 cup flour
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp sweet paprika
2 tsp caraway seed

Dredge the chicken legs in a dish of milk and then shake in the flour mixture. Double quantities if you are using a large number of chicken legs. Place on a baking pan and brush with olive oil. Bake at 350 for 40 minutes or until done.

My family did like this recipe, but felt it could have used more spices. This is just a guideline, as no measurements were given and I just "eyeballed" the quantities.


I used Anytizer chicken nuggets and called them Peacock nuggets. You could make similar substitutions for exotic foods like ostrich and flamingo.


Green Salad

For our simple salad I tore Romaine lettuce leaves and topped them with black olives, red onion and some feta cheese. Romans did NOT use tomatoes, so neither did we. I like to top a simple salad like this one with some dry Good Seasons Italian dressing, just sprinkled over the top, and then drizzle with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. For other occasions, add red or yellow pepper strips, tomatoes, and sundried-tomato flavored feta cheese. Everyone seems to love this simple, delicious salad.

Omelet with Black Pepper and Honey

The Roman omelet recipe I used called for adding both milk and a bit of olive oil to the eggs before cooking the omelet. I don't usually add oil to omelets, but "when in Rome!" When the omelet was finished I topped it with some fresh ground black pepper, as the recipe instructed. Mushrooms were also called for, but my family hates them so I left those out. The recipe said to serve the omelet with honey. Our four year old was the first to taste it and he loved it! I tried it, too, and it reminded me of egg custard...not unpleasant at all!

Slushies

I was keeping things simple so I did not make slushies, but you could. I read that sometimes slaves were sent into the mountains to bring back fresh snow for slushies. If you have a snowcone maker this would be a fun addition to your feast!

You Know You're a Homeschooler When....

Your kids and their friends try to light sparklers from flint and steel....



and eventually they succeed!

Getting Organized for a New Year

It's that time again! We've started back to school. Have you? We've left the Ancients behind, and have moved on to the Middle Ages. New books, new projects, new feasts await.

But first, I always have to get organized. One of the most important things, for me, is to get my history and science boxes set up. I hate it when we have to skip experiments or projects because we were out of vinegar, or I didn't have Epsom salts on hand!

Here's a picture of what my younger boys have in their science box. My oldest son gets his own box of supplies, since he is using a different curriculum than the younger boys are.


Sure, it takes a few hours at the store to pull all this stuff together. I guess I could let the boys use tinfoil, salt and baking soda from the pantry. But would you trust your kids to search here on their own?



You can read more about how I set up these boxes in my post Gathering Supplies in Advance.

Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival

I'm so thrilled to be hosting the latest edition of the Charlotte Mason blog carnival! We are beginning our 10th year of homeschooling this fall. The very first book I ever read about homeschooling was The Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola. I was captivated by Miss Mason's ideas and knew that I wanted to bless my children with that kind of education.



Inspiration for a New Year

Barb at Harmony Art Mom explains how families can still use Charlotte Mason principles during High School in her post High School Planning: Reminders from Charlotte Mason.
She shares some quotes from CM Volume 6, which are "a breath of fresh air". Charlotte wrote, "If we can only allow ourselves to believe it, we really don't have to manipulate children to learn their lessons. Nature has already taken care of that. If the lessons are the right kind, children will enjoy learning them." Barb's encouraging post about atmosphere and establishing habits put me in the mood to get back to school!



I needed those reminders! As I wrote in my post New Year, New Books, I sometimes find it hard to leave summer behind and begin a new school year. My recipe for end-of-summer-blues calls for setting up our new school year bookshelf. An hour or two spent looking at all the great books waiting for us quickly turns my heart toward the joys that lay in store for us. In this post on Countercultural School, I share my audio podcast series The Homeschooler's Library, which is full of practical ideas and inspiration for choosing living books.



I am looking forward to making audio books a daily part of our curriculum this year. We are currently enjoying the living history books Our Island Story by H. E. Marshall and The Story of the Middle Ages by Samuel B. Harding, which can both be streamed at my new blog My Audio School.



Charlotte Mason's volume 6 was a popular read this summer! Keri from Sunny Scholars also read it, and she distills Charlotte's philosophy clearly and succinctly in her post Charlotte Mason in a Box? Using ideas from C.M. Volume 6, Keri shares insight into choosing a course of study the Charlotte Mason way.



Nature Study

I wondered if Heather of Maple Hill Academy might be suffering from end-of-summer-blues, too, when I first read her post about nature study, Winter Fun. As she notes, it may seem odd to mention this topic in the summer, but I found many of her thoughts to be applicable here in Georgia, where the heat threatens to keep us indoors all summer. You'll want to check out her post for ideas of how to do nature study--both indoors and out--even when the weather is not ideal.



Tammy from Adventures on Beck's Bounty lets us take a peek at what they've been finding on summer nature walks. Take a look at her posts, Nature Walk Discoveries and More Nature Walk Photos. The photos in Tammy's posts are worth a thousand words. They inspired me to take my own children outside to observe and photograph the flowers and wildlife in our yard.



Jimmie has been using photo-sensitive paper for nature studies. Her fun post Nature Print Paper can be found on her blog Jimmie's Collage. I know we have some of this paper in our school closet, but we haven't used it for a couple years. Thanks for the reminder, Jimmie!



Using Living Books for Science and Math

Jimmie also provides some reviews from the wonderful new website The Curriculum Choice. Who would have thought one could study chemistry with living books? Jimmie shares about her wonderful find in the post The Mystery of the Periodic Table. In her Living Math Curriculum Review, Jimmie shares about a math supplement which is "a historical tour through time, looking at the mathematical developments of each period."



Poetry and Memorization

Jeanne at A Peaceful Day shares about her new experiment with poetry memorization the Charlotte Mason way in her post Memorization and the Man. The quote she shares is well worth reading, and Jeanne is finding Charlotte's method is working wonderfully in their homeschool. A lovely video clip, along with the text of their chosen poem, The Man from Snowy River, can be found in her post.



Incorporating Notebooking and Lapbooking

Katie from Katie's Homeschool Cottage shares how her family struggled to implement lapbooking, but eventually found success Combining Notebooking and Lapbooking. You'll find great tips, lots of photos and tons of great notebooking and lapbooking links in Katie's helpful post.




Applying Charlotte Mason's ideas beyond the classroom

Anna from French Kids Don't Get Fat shares How to Use Masterly Inactivity to Win Your Child to Healthy Eating for Life. I had never imagined applying Charlotte Mason's ideas at the dinner table before, but Anna gave me lots of "food for thought"!



Click here to view past editions of the Charlotte Mason blog carnival. If you are using Charlotte Mason's methods in your homeschool, we'd love to read about it in the next blog carnival! Click here to submit a post.

New Year, New Books

It has been harder than usual for me to gear up for school this year. The summer flew by so quickly!! I don't feel quite ready for Medieval feasts and learning to make mosaics.

Ready or not, here we go! It's school time again. We're leaving the Ancients behind and moving on to The Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Reformation.

Although I feel like I'm still recovering from a whirlwind summer, there is one thing that always gets me excited about school: the books! Charlotte Mason believed that living books whet a child's appetite to learn. I find they do the same for me!

I love deciding what we are going to read each year, and arranging all our school books front and center in our reading nook. The old favorites nestle up alongside shiny new books, just waiting for someone to crack open their covers.

Oh, to be a child again and have time to read every one of those wonderful, living books! I feel blessed that as a homeschooling mom, I'll get to share a great number of them with the people I love most.

Are you ready to start back to school? Do you need some inspiration? You might enjoy listening to an episode or two of my series The Homeschooler's Library. There are 7 episodes, covering topics such as Choosing Books for Voracious Readers, Books for Art, Music, Poetry and Nature Study, Mommy's Reading Time, and Building Character through Books.



To listen, double click on the arrow by "Select a past episode" and then choose your episode and click play. The bottom episode is actually #1, the top episode is #7. Or, to download these talks to Mp3, click "Visit My Call". Each episode lasts about 15 minutes.