Remember when...

Do you remember when you were a kid and you just had a vacation day or week? Do you remember what it was like to go back to school? Oh man, do I ever remember! I hated it.

Well, it is the same here, today. Neither my boys nor I really wanted to start school after having 3 days off for Labor Day. Oh the drudgery. However, like every other school day, we started. It was s-l-o-w. Time ticked as we marched though.

Finally, around noon, the boys completed their math tests, grammar, and journal. My oldest son, currently in the sixth grade, has made his first post to his own personal blog. He has titled it “Matthew’s Review.” He intends on writing reviews for books, movies, & games that he has divulged in.

Nikolas set up his blog today, but has not posted to it yet. He hopes to write for his tomorrow.

Basically, my goal is to have my boys just write about stuff they like. Yes, I will edit for punctuation, capitalization, etc…but not for content. I hope it works!

We’ve been studying Pre-American History for this past week. More specifically, we’ve been studying the Renaissance Period and the Reformation of the church. We found that Johann Gutenberg had an important part in the timeline toward our American History. Because of him, we now had the printing press. The printing press plays a big part in the reformation of the church as well. Not only was the Gutenberg Bible printed, but also many other documents that were needed by the Cardinals for the church were printed too.

We had fun carving potatoes to make letters and then using paint as our ‘ink’ to print our initials.


We learned about the struggles between the Catholics and Protestants, and how King Henry VIII established the Church of England. This was a big break from the Catholic Church.

We studied Prince Henry the Navigator who sailed from Portugal to discover a new way to China. His mapmaking and encouragement set the mood for more discovery missions later on. We studied other explorers too, like Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, John Cabot, and Vasco de Gama. It was because of these that we have our country, America.

We had a lot of fun!

Now, for this week we continue our trek through time by studying James VI & I. In case you don’t know, James VI & I was the first-born son of Mary Queen of Scots. He was crowned King of Scotland when he was 13 months old. Thirty-six years later, he was crowned King of England. James VI & I ordered the translation of the Bible from Latin to English. It was the only Bible that was authorized by the King and the only version allowed in the church at that time.

Tomorrow, we’ll learn about the monopolies that England was involved in. Just a subject I am not familiar with… Guess I’d better go study.

One thing we will do for fun tomorrow is to draw a map of England. We were suppose to do that today, but ran out of time. Maybe I’ll post pictures of our maps.

More later.