No More Naked Men Please

So.....next Thursday we are going to Georgia's Renaissance Festival for their home school/elementary school day. I've decided that in preparation we will skip ahead about 1500 years, give or take, in our history studies and do a crash course on the time period of the Renaissance.

So far.....

• We've read an overview of the Renaissance in A Child's History of the World by Hillyer.
• We've studied the art of DaVinci and Michelangelo. (Eli says he's tired of naked men, lol)
• We've read a child's version of The Tempest by Shakespeare. Mason loved this.
• We've learned how men and women from different classes greeted each other.
• The boys learned how to "make a leg". It seems men in this time were especially proud of their calves and took every opportunity to show them off. They wore stockings and short pants and would stand with a leg forward and foot turned outward to make their calf more prominent.
• We tried to learn how to bow but still need more practice. They flat refused to kiss my hand.
• We've learned that people in this era tried to be as wordy as possible.

We've got so much more to cover. Henry VIII, knights, more Shakespeare, more Renaissance culture, King Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin.......etc. I can do anything for a week, right?

I hope that going from the uber interesting culture of Classical Greece to the just as interesting culture of The Renaissance won't make the boys' eyes glaze over when we have to study the less interesting parts of history.