A history wrap-up

I haven't been posting much on our history and math day at the Mattson's on Monday's.  Well today was the last day for this year so here's a warp up of the past month or so....

Tudor England....we discussed England's monarch reign of the Tudor family, notably Henry the III- Henry the VIII, Queen Mary (Bloody Mary), Mary Queen of Scots,  and Queen Elizabeth (Good Queen Bess.)  What a family!  Thankfully not mine!

We learned that during the time of Queen Elizabeth (this was the time of Shakespeare), that many buildings were built in the shape of an "E".  This created two courtyards for gardens and lawns.  A favorite passtime was to play lawn bowling.  We too, played some lawn bowling.  A ball was thrown out for the target--ours was the small yellow ball in the picture.  Then the players each had a turn to roll their own ball towards the target ball.  The closest one to the target wins.  The owner of the basketball won this time.

Delaney takeing her turn playing the game.

Math time!!  During math time Liam, Amber and I work on learning letters and the sounds they make and have fun playing math games. 

Explorers of the New World....  For two weeks we spent some time on the explorers of North and South America.  Cartier, Champlange, Hudson, Vespucci, Columbus, Dias, Coronado,    We learned that many of them honed their map making skills and drew maps of all the lands they traveled.   Here's Liam with his treasure...a beautiful rock!

We gave the kids each their own book to make maps and write details about the flora, fauna and anything else they may discover in their new-found-land....below, you'll see Connor's map of the yard.

The People of the New World....The Aztecs, Incas and Mayans.    We know the real history of this wonderful new world....just read the Book of Mormon to get the full deal.  But we had fun reading and listening about the cultures that developed after the great wars between the Lamanites and Nephities, the Jaredites  
We created paper masks of Jaguars, vaguely similar to the ones that were worn by the Aztecs warriors. 

Although Ryan didn't join in the creating fun of crafts, he did often join us for the day.  He just went off to read about his history lessons or work on his math.  Many time I would drop him off at the libray.  He really enjoys spending time there.. I think it's because he doens't want to have to share the computer time with his siblings.

Painting her jaguar mask.

We especially enjoyed learning about their discovery of the caco beans and the development of chocolate.....Mmmmmm oh so yummy!

 The Reformation and Counter-Reformation    We listen, talked and learned about Martin Luther and his 95 Thesis and some of the others (Zwingli, Calvin, Wycliff and others)  that followed in his foot steps in challenging the Church and Pope about the doctrines they were teaching.  We learned that this all came about when Gutenberg developed the printing press and made it possible for the Bible to be available to the common people, thus reading for themselves the word of God and not having to rely on the church leaders to tell them what it said.  We also talked about how important this step in history was for the restoration of God's church to be brought back to the earth.  These great men of the Reformation were valiant servants of our Heavenly Father.  For our activity we tried our hand at potato printing.