The studies focus on the following books from Sonlight. These links go through to Sonlight Curriculum or Amazon.com. South African’s should rather purchase through Kalahari.net

A Child’s History of the World VM Hillyer

Michelangelo by Dianne Stanley

Leonardo by Dianne Stanley

The Apprentice

And we added in the following:

Shakespeare Stories by Leon Garfield

The Bard of Avon: The Story of William Shakespeare by Dianne Stanley

Shakespeare for Children: A Midsummer Nights Dream and Taming of the Shrew by Greathall Productions.

I also made use of the Homeschool E-store's product – A Renaissance Lapbook from In the Hands of a Child.

Art Appreciation

This era was a rebirth of the appreciation of fine art amongst other disciplines. As you read through the biographies make a point of spending some time to enjoy the beautiful art that adorns the pages of these books.

Read my art art appreciation article on this website on how to make it part of your homeschool curriculum.

Visit Olga's art gallery and save some of the period pictures to your desktop. Set them as wallpaper on your screen and enjoy looking at the art with your children.

Buy ready stretched canvases for your older children and ask them to copy part or the whole of one picture done by the artists you study. Acrylics are better than oils as they do not take as long to dry.

The masters of old painted in “Fresco”. Create a tablet of Plaster of Paris in a disposable flat container. Before it is totally dry, your children can paint onto it for a Fresco effect.

Purchase some potters clay for your children to sculpt with. Allow them to be creative and make whatever they please.

Poetry

In the Renaissance great pleasure was taken from poetry. Help your younger children to write a poem about something of beauty. Older children can do this on their own.

You can download a Renaissance notebook page onto which you can transcribe your child’s finished poem.

I created the following notebook pages for my children to do their written narration on for this period of study. They too can form part of your Renaissance hands on activities.

Leonardo Da Vinci

Michelangelo

Sir Walter Raleigh

Martin Luther

William Shakespeare

You will need Adobe Reader installed on your computer in order to open and use these notebook pages. You can get Adobe Reader here

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