It is fun when their interests converge with their education. I want to pursue more delight driven subjects. One such subject for him is knights. Although they're not technically knights, his interest in knight-like behavior (bravery, sword-fighting, etc.) was fueled by reading about by Peter, Edmund and Prince Caspian in the Narnia series. I know he is young, but we also let him watch the movies, which he loved.
To capitalize on these interests, for much of our extra reading this week, we focused on two legends featuring bravery and sword fighting: Robin Hood and King Arthur. I chose this week to focus on these legends because the Classical Conversations history sentence for the week dealt with Richard the Lion-Hearted and the Crusades.
We first watched Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood.
This movie is a little silly with the sequins-adorned costumes and the constant throwing back of the head to laugh but fairly appropriate for his age. I think he understood the historical context as he has been listening to the Robin Hood portion of The Story of the World: Volume 2 for the past two weeks.
I thought this also would be a good week to introduce him to the legend of King Arthur. To get warmed up, we read a simple Hello Reader called The Sword in the Stone by Grace Maccarone.
We followed that up with a more difficult version of the same legend, Arthur and the Sword, a picture book by Robert Sabuda with interesting stained glass illustrations. I thought it was good, but it was the children's least favorite book of the week.
We also read a chapter book I purchased at a recent Usborne party called The Adventures of King Arthur. This expanded into other aspects of the legend besides the sword in the stone. This one piqued my five-year-old's interest, but I thought the writing was poor.
Our favorite version of the legend was the sound recording, King Arthur and His Knights as told by Jim Weiss.
As the finale to our week of legends, we are going start a book today that is set in the days of King Arthur, Clyde Robert Bulla's The Sword in the Tree.
We also had a good week with science, which will be the topic of my next post.
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