Paint Your Way Through Medieval History and Literature - A Review
Adele is in Paint Your Way Through Medieval History and Literature.
Once a week at a certain time, she meets with her art teacher and her art class live and online to discuss a story from The Middle Ages and complete an art project that goes along with that story.
The students are given a suggested reading list ahead of time, but the reading is not required.
Specific titles and authors in the suggested reading list have included:
King Arthur and The Nights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green
One Thousand and One Arabian Nights by Geraldine McCaughrean
Queen Eleanor: Independent Spirit of the Medieval World by Polly Brooks
The Adventures of Robin Hood by Roger Lancelyn Green
The Magna Carta by James Daugherty
We managed the reading in ways that worked for our schedule and budget:
I had already read King Arthur and The Nights of the Round Table to the girls a few year ago, so we just skipped that title, since Adele was already familiar with the stories.
I already had versions of Arabian Nights and Robin Hood with different authors than the titles above, so I assigned those to Adele instead and that worked fine. Adele read through the books portion by portion during her daily, silent reading times.
I already had the audio book of The Magna Carta, so we listened to that as a family at mealtimes.
We entirely skipped the book about Queen Eleanor, since we didn't already have it, we already had a few read- alouds going, and I knew Adele just wasn't going to be able to read fast enough to cover all the titles in the class during the time period. Adele heard more about Eleanor in class, so she is very likely to still want to read that book, but she didn't miss out or feel left because she didn't read that book.
Adele is in Foundations and Essentials at Classical Conversations, so she is learning history sentences and timeline facts about Cycle 2- The Middle Ages right now, and she is using source texts about The Middle Ages for her essays, so these stories and art projects have done even more to bring the history content to life.
I'll include pictures of Adele's art projects and the art techniques taught with them below.
Islamic Architecture to go with Arabian Nights
"Stained Glass" Window to go with Queen Eleanor
Acrylic Painting of Sherwood Forest for Robin Hood
Wanted Poster to go with Robin Hood
There will be a few more projects before the semester ends.
The tuition and time commitment are manageable for us, and I love that someone else (besides me) is inspiring creativity and providing enriching experiences for Adele.
Adele is learning some legitimate art techniques and concepts like graphite transfers, shading, etc. that she might not be learning otherwise.
We heard about these classes through another Classical Conversations family with daughters a few years older than ours. I was really impressed with some of the art projects those girls were doing, but I hesitated to sign-up because I tend to be so practical it's shameful. We already have a lot to manage by completing all our regular schoolwork.
But I am becoming more and more convinced that art in all its forms is something that brings glory to God and inspires worship, something that is a form of worship, so I am trying to make more time and opportunity for enrichment like this.
We signed up for one semester of this class, but we are likely to continue with this class through the entire year and continue signing up for other classes in years to come.
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