Tour de Monarchs

The best school projects are always the ones that the students themselves initiate.

Oldest Daughter has for a couple years now evinced an ongoing fascination with England and the English way of doing things. This may have its origins in her discovery of her father's collection of 30-year-old Dr. Who novels from when he was her age. Alternately, it may have grown from her frequent voyages to Middle Earth courtesy of Professor Tolkien and "The Lord of the Rings." It's also possible it's just One of Those Things.

Regardless, I know a good thing when I see one. This past Christmas, I gave her a copy of "The Plantagenets: The Kings that Made Britain" as her own, to read.

Read it she has. In less than a month, she has read about kings from Henry II down through Henry V, and in that remarkable way that children have, she has kept track not only of major events like the Peasants Revolt and the Black Death, but has kept track of whose son was whose, which kings were good, and which were bad.

And that's all good, but like every other homeschooling parent, I want to make sure that she's not only reading, she's learning; and like every other homeschooling parent, I want her passion for learning in one area to fuel a passion for learning in other areas. Reading opens doorways to the past, but if those doors, once opened, don't also lead to adjoining chambers of music, art and even computer skills, I soon would feel that an opportunity had been missed.

So today, as we took a walk outside to get some fresh air and stretch our legs, we talked about what she can produce for her homeschooling portfolio, from this journey through English history.

The project:

• A series of index cards, one for each ruler of England, beginning with Henry II. Each card will include an original rendering either of the king, his chivalric crest, or an inhabited initial for his name; plus the name of the king, the years he reigned, and the two or three most remarkable thing about his reign.
• When the index cards are finished, Oldest Daughter will scan her images, and use them to create a PowerPoint that presentation with the pertinent information on the cards.
• Oldest Daughter also will create a video based on the PowerPoint presentation, accompanied by a rendition of  the British patriotic hymn "Jerusalem." For bonus points, she will add to the soundtrack the question "Did somebody say 'mattress' to Mr. Lambert?" followed by the rejoinder "Twice!"

Quite apart from the project, we're continuing to read plays and other literature about these kings. Oldest Daughter earlier this year read T.S. Elliot's "Murder in the Cathedral," and I'm hoping we can find some decent video adaptations of the appropriate Shakespeare plays detailing the Wars of the Roses, beginning with "Richard II" and ending with "Richard III."

So, if all goes according to plan, at the end of this course of study on the kings of England, she not only will have studied her history, she'll have exercised her art skills, learned and performed some music, and put her computer skills to use.

And perhaps best of all, she'll have done so with a nod to Monty Python.