Aeneid Class: Week 11: Horatio at the Bridge

This post relates to my literature class for children at Homeschool Out of the Box co-op in Norfolk, VA. This semester we are reading The Aeneid, using Penelope Lively's book In Search of a Homeland, and other supplemental materials. For other lessons, please click the Aeneid tag at the bottom of this post.

Welcome: Last week was so gloriously exciting that we needed this week to catch up a bit and regroup. We had some recitations to hear, some songs to review, and we needed to get back in touch with the story of the Aeneid.

Underworld Travel Guides: I checked the kids' work on their Underworld Travel Guides (or Underworld Bestiaries) and awarded citizenship coins to those who had finished the job. Some of these kids did absolutely amazing work on their illustrations and showed a great command of the material and real creativity in presenting the information. I hope these will be keepsakes for your child to remember their experience with this text for years to come. When they revisit the Aeneid in college, hopefully they'll remember their first interaction with it, as kids.

Scrapbooking: Speaking of memories, I had photos printed for the children to paste into their scrapbooks. We took some time to do that today, and look back over the activities they did in class: the dinner party, the gladiator games, and the chariot races. Some of them wrote captions and notes for themselves to look back on. I encouraged them to include their own drawings, their own pictures from home, or any other little keepsakes or memories that they might have collected during the class.

Horatio at the Bridge: We've been working on a dramatic recitation of this poem, and today we solidified the parts. There are four individual parts: Consul (Emily, Julia), Horatio (Sarah R, Stephen), Spurius Lartius (Shira, Martina), and Herminius (Louis, Basi). Ask your kids whether they have an individual part, and make sure they know what they are supposed to be reciting. All of us together will recite the first two and last two stanzas.

Reading Assignments: For next week, read The Flames of War and The Future Foretold.