It seems like most school years start off a bit slow and ramp up as we get closer to Christmas. This year has not been like most. It feels a bit like we hit the ground running and have not stopped since! This is probably in large part due to the fact that I am doing quite a bit to help in other aspects of the running of the school. (Most Waldorf schools are faculty run, which is truly a blessing, though it does make for quite a bit of work!)
My students and I have been so busy we have not yet had a regular, ordinary week of school! It’s wonderful that our weeks have been so full of field trips, visitors, block tests, school events and even a substitute or two, but I am so glad that finally this week we will have a plain old, regular week of school.
We are still studying Rome and on the agenda for the week is an outline of the government of the Roman republic, Carthage and the Punic Wars, and Hannibal. I’m already imagining our drawings of those elephants in the Alps!
I’m using a couple of resources for this block.
Ancient Rome by Charles Kovacs I honestly don’t know what Waldorf teachers did before Charles Kovacs. I did go through most of my first time around without knowing about Kovacs’ books and somehow I managed to get by, but his books just make everything easier. They bring things in a very digested, easily delivered format, you truly can tell the story directly from his books. This isn’t always the best thing, however, so I always like to have a few extra resources so I’ve got enough background knowledge for myself.
The Roman Republic by Don Nardo is a book that I found at my public library in my old town. This is the kind of book that I used to check out of the library when I did reports when I was in school. It lays out the history in a very clear, linear way, so it is easy to see the connections from one era to the next. This is something that is definitely lacking in the Kovacs books. What this book is lacking, though, is imagination. It is a stretch to take the dry historical content in this book and transform it into a rich, creative, imaginative retelling that the students can really sink their imaginations into. Fortunately Rome is a pretty captivating time, so it isn’t proving to be much of a challenge, and with the Kovacs book to help, bringing curriculum that is historically accurate but still full of rich imagery is proving to be a pretty manageable task for this block.
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