This year I've got a pretty strict schedule for history. Last year we hadn't finished when the end of the year came along and I had about 4 chapters hanging over my head all summer long. This year I did two things. One, we started in August and used those couple of weeks to finish up what didn't get done last year. Two, I've written out what section to do each day and projects and I'm sticking to it like glue. Unfortunately I also repeated something from last year. When I made my plan I thought, oh, yes! making a cloak would be so much fun. Not so much when I haven't gone to the store and we are having a heat wave in the first week of September. Oh, yes! let's bake sugar cookies! Who knew it would be 95 degrees out. But, I'm pressing through it. The kids LOVE these projects. The material really comes alive and "sticks" when we take the time and effort to make/bake/glue/paint our way through history. This plan also means that we've already done two blog-able projects but I'm just finding my blogging mo-jo so I'm a little behind with that... Roman Signums. Roman armies carried a signum into battle to identify the different legions. The signums started off as really basic but as time went on they grew more and more elaborate. So elaborate and decorated that they got so heavy that the soldier that held it was unable to also carry a weapon and defend himself. We followed the directions and used the templates in the activity book and made our own signums.