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Posted

Let me see if I can explain this clearly:

 

We're covering the Middle Ages this year, and I think we'll get through the Tudors by next summer.

 

For the purposes of this post, I'm differentiating between copywork and narration. We're doing copywork so my son can learn the flow of beautiful language and practice his writing skills, and I prefer that it be primary source material whenever possible, so that he can connect with the feel of the time period we're studying. We've got some passages that reflect our family's religious beliefs already, but we're not Christian, so I'd prefer that any Biblical passages or excerpts from religious poetry be descriptive rather than proselytizing in nature.

 

I found this page on Wikipedia, but haven't gotten to chase down all these resources yet. I wondered if anyone else had been in this position, and whether you had some passages you particularly liked. Would you mind posting them, if so?

 

Thanks so much.

Posted

We are using The Nibelungenlied translated by William Nanson Lettsom.

 

I have found it to be perfect for copywork. The entire epic poem is written in fairly short four line stanzas (at least my translation.) :)

Posted

For each chapter I did a Google search; I usually chose a person's name and then "quotes", so, for example, "Genghis Khan quotes" and I had much success that way.. or I would find a poem that referred to the person or culture in question, etc. For example:

 

The Black Death

Selection by Giovanni Boccaccio

No human wisdom or foresight had any value: enormous amounts of refuse and manure were removed from the city by appointed officials, the sick were barred from entering the city, and many instructions were given to preserve health. Despite all this, at the beginning of spring that year, that horrible plague began with its dolorous effects in a most awe-inspiring manner, as I will tell you. And it did not behave as it did in the Orient, where if blood began to rush out the nose it was a manifest sign of inevitable death; but rather it began with swellings in the groin and armpit, in both men and women, some of which were as big as apples and some of which were shaped like eggs, some were small and others large.

 

Kublai Khan

Selection from Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

 

Russia

Russian Proverbs

Deprive a mirror of its silver and even the czar won't see his face.

When the Czar has a cold all Russia coughs.

The hen of the Czarina herself does not lay swan's eggs.

Every seed knows its time.

You will reap what you sow.

Idleness is the mother of all vices.

Don't wake up trouble while it sleeps quietly.

Only he who does nothing makes no mistakes.

 

..and so on. I counted it as part of my prep work for the week, to take ten minutes or so and find some kind of related material. I didn't find it overly time consuming. My older ds had to copy it all in cursive, my younger only had a select few lines to print.

 

hth!

 

Kate

Posted

Are we allowed to post the table of contents here? I didn't see it on the PHP website but it's on Amazon... If so you could do it here or get a few volunteers together and do it privately; make a list and have people fill in a few here and there until you had something for each chapter.. if that's the kind of thing you're thinking of (still not 100% sure). That way it's a collaborative effort and not a big toll on one person.

 

I have things for several chapters, but not all. We only started regular history copywork once the kids finished their handwriting books in second semester.

 

Come to think of it, I might be interested in doing that for the last bits of SOTW 2 and SOTW 3, which we'll be doing this year. If anyone is interested send me a pm with your email and maybe I'll see about getting a template together...

 

Kate

Posted
Are we allowed to post the table of contents here? I didn't see it on the PHP website but it's on Amazon... If so you could do it here or get a few volunteers together and do it privately; make a list and have people fill in a few here and there until you had something for each chapter...

 

I'd love to benefit from a project like that. :D If we're going to do it on the message boards, the person administrating the project could post the first message with a TOC, then go in with the edit function and place an X next to the chapters that get secular copywork. Is that the sort of thing you were thinking of?

Posted

That's exactly what I was thinking of. Just have the chapters/subjects listed, and people could fill in wherever they had something secular/appropriate, until it was all filled. Surely with the gazillion members we have that wouldn't take too long?

 

But I'm not 100% sure it would be allowed -- would it?

Posted

oh what a good idea, Kate. I don't see why it wouldn't be allowed - the TOC is on Amazon. And that's what I'm using to plan out the last half of our year - I haven't bought SOTW 3 yet, so I'm using the TOC to roughly lay out a schedule until I get around to buying it.

 

And, SOTW really lines up with Kingfisher, anyway, so someone could even use that as an outline and it would still be roughly the same thing. If anything, I think posting the TOC and all the neat copywork would inspire ppl to go out and buy the book!

  • 3 weeks later...
Posted
For each chapter I did a Google search; I usually chose a person's name and then "quotes", so, for example, "Genghis Khan quotes" and I had much success that way.. or I would find a poem that referred to the person or culture in question, etc.

 

I spent several hours doing searches using Google, and I was amazed at what I found! So many results included primary source quotes, too. The links were also very helpful, everyone, particularly the one to Jessie's site.

 

Thank you all so much. I have a wonderful list of quotes compiled for copywork. If anyone thinks they'd want it, I'll post.

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