Adventures big and small in family life and home education

Month: July 2023

Sicily – An Adventure in Ancient Greece!

At the Parco Archeologico in Syracuse.

In March of 2022, I was keen to grasp the first opportunity for family travel as the world opened up after covid. My husband had work and study commitments at the time too and we realised that some of the freedom home education offered would soon vanish for the immediate future. So we acted quickly to find cheap flights to somewhere new and exciting. I had hoped for Greece, as we were in the middle of our topic on Ancient Greece which the children were loving, but that was outwith our budget. We settled on Sicily – the flights were cheap and we love pizza! And another bonus – Sicily was part of Ancient Greece!

I enjoy research and planning in many areas of my life, but what is better than researching and planning for holiday adventures? I selected our accommodation to be in the best location to access the sights we wanted to see. Before we left Scotland, I had found sights for an activity on almost every day. (I hadn’t decided which sight would be on which day, as that depended on the weather and allowed for some flexibility if we just wanted a rest day.)

Syracuse

This was our closest city so we ventured there on our first full day. We spent our time at the Parco Archeologico della Neapolis, pictured in the main photo above, which contains a huge theatre constructed during the times of the ancient Greek empire. It is also home to the Ear of Dionysis, a huge cave carved in rock, intended as water storage in ancient Greek times. It has the accidental quirk of amazing acoustics, hence the name, so the children whispered and hollered, admiring the sounds as they resonated through the ‘ear.’

One of the benefits of being Scottish – a nippy breeze and ominous clouds don’t put us off a beach trip!

Later that afternoon we found a nearby beach and the children enjoyed a splash. It is worth noting that the weather was not that warm during our entire holiday. As you can see from the photo, only hardy Scottish children were braving the waves!

Mount Etna

The view of Etna from our holiday apartment. The day we visited Etna we couldn’t see it at all!

Despite being pulled to Sicily for the history, the top adventure of the holiday was our journey up Mount Etna.

As we accepted that there might not be any really sunny days during our holiday, we plumped for a pretty rubbish day to visit Mount Etna. We drove the winding road on the first part of the journey to the visitor centre in thick fog- a real pea souper! Chris and I tried to cover our own disappointment at the weather conditions with enthusiasm as we exclaimed to the children, “We must be so high up already! Doesn’t it feel high up?!” There was no view out the window at all! We parked at the visitor centre which was completely shrouded in mist. We stumbled around the car park, tightly gripping the children’s hands so we didn’t lose them in the gloom. We literally bumped into another family, who were also trying to find the booth to buy tickets for the cable car. We eventually located this and purchased tickets for the cable car and the all terrain vans which would take us as close to the crater at the top as was possible for us to go. A few months prior to this, visitors could get right to the very top, but due to increased volcanic activity, we could only go so far.

The journey up in the cable car was amazing. It began in the thick fog but suddenly we emerged into brilliant sunshine, looking down on a landscape of clouds and up to a smoking peak! From the cable car, we bounced our way up the mountainside in the all terrain vehicle before walking the final part to the highest accessible point. Our tour guide encouraged the children to collect as much volcanic rock as they liked (more is made all the time!) and told us how the volcano changes in shape and height at a remarkable rate.

We trampled over snow and volcanic rock to the smoking peak of Etna. Delilah made sure we had plenty of rock samples to take home!

On returning to the visitor centre, the cloud level had moved down a bit and the place was now basked in warmth. We enjoyed pizza in the sunshine (Dexter’s favourite of the holiday – a pizza topped with chips!).

Taormina

Chris and Delilah listening to the impressive church bells in Piazza IX Aprile, Taormina.

We drove North to Taormina, with the main aim to enjoy an afternoon at the Isola Bella. We had hoped to take the cable car from the city itself down to the beach but it was closed, so we drove the windy, narrow streets and parked. It truly was a beautiful beach, covered in pebbles with a jutting outcrop sheltering the inlet. The children enjoyed a slightly warmer splash and set up their own personal sunbathing spots on the mini ‘islands’ made by the rocks. In the early evening, we returned to Taormina and stumbled upon a charming square, Piazza IX Aprile, which was home to churches and restaurants, complete with a view of the sea and Etna beyond. We ate more pizza and enjoyed the atmosphere.

Agrigento

Roaming free in the Valley of the Temples.

The final day saw our longest journey, to Agrigento – the Valley of the Temples. We spent the day wandering amongst the temples and statues which were once part of ancient Greece. I don’t recall a great deal of English signage or literature available around the site; and in all honesty by this point in the trip we might not have absorbed that much had we seen it. I believe there was a museum there too, but we opted to spend the day outside – to my surprise there was no requirement to remain on footpaths and we could free range over the ruins. This was perfect for our energetic three year old and provided a great opportunity for the older two to create a little photoshoot in the impressive setting. Highlights included the collapsed statue of Zeus alongside his temple and the modern art installation of Icarus (no guide book required, the older two recited the story for me!).

Those were the highlights of our visit to Sicily and looking back over a year later, I’m reminded of what a lovely time we had. Although the weather was not that warm and Sicily had been virtually devoid of any sort of tourism for two years when we visited (there was very much a sense of things ‘waking up,’ restaurant and shop fronts were being cleaned and painted), we had a brilliant time. We saw historic sights, spent time in nature and ate delicious food, our top holiday pass times!

Ancient Greece Home Ed Topic

During the covid lockdown, like many parents, I tried to find educational, non-screen sources of entertainment for my children. In all honesty, I also wanted to find something low effort on my part. A Google search led me to a podcast on Greek mythology. We listened to an episode together one afternoon while eating dinner and the children were instantly hooked. If you’ve read my post on why we started home educating you’ll know that part of the reason was how interested my children were in a variety of topics, including Greek mythology. I decided that for our first home ed topic we would look at Ancient Greece, pulling in mythology, society, culture and home life to capture their interest while broadening their understanding of this era in history. I’d like to share some of the resources we used and the activities we carried out, highlighting the things that worked and the things that didn’t.

Ancient Greek Resources

These are resources that we included in our Ancient Greece Morning Basket and would also pull from as required during any topic learning.

Ancient Greeks – Part of the Usborne History set

See Inside Ancient Greece – a super lift the flap book.

The Usborne Internet Linked Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece – comes with internet links for more research.

Myth Match – a beautiful book where you flip the pages to create new mythological creatures.

Usborne Visitor’s Guide to Ancient Greece

Choose Your Own Adventure Trojan War

Horrible Histories Groovy Greeks

Zeus on the Loose – a Greek Mythology themed maths game.

Who Let the Gods Out? – novel series by Maz Evans. We read these during Morning time.

Echo Echo – a beautiful reverso poetry book, based on Greek Myths.

The Percy Jackson Series – we didn’t actually read this at the time of our topic, I thought the children might be too scared. They were since gifted them and Dexter is enjoying them.

Greeking Out – the podcast that started it all!

Kid’s Animated History with Pipo – I struggled to find good TV programs on the topic. This Amazon prime series has a couple of episodes on classical Greece.

Ancient Greek Home Ed Activities

Myth Writing

Thanks to Greeking Out, the children already had a fantastic starting knowledge on Ancient Greek Heros and Monsters. During our weekly writing lesson time, the children wrote their own Greek Myths. First, they each created and drew their own Greek Mythology style hero and monster. We were working on using adjectives and adverbs in writing at the time, so they were next tasked with describing their character in a descriptive passage. Next, they drew and described an appropriate setting for their characters. I provided them with Story Mountains so they could plot out the events in their myth. Finally, they wrote chapters containing their descriptive passages, along with action and speech. This took us several weeks, dipping in and out. By the end of the project, each child had written their own illustrated Greek Myth.

Chiton Making

For Eliza, two interests collided here. She loves a crafty project and often drafts and follows patterns to sew her own simple toys. She loved using her wee machine to make her own Greek clothing. We used an old white sheet and sewed down the sides, then tied at the waist to create a chiton. Dexter made a shorter one and then they worked together to make one for little sister.

Vase Designing and Making

We designed our own vases on paper but also worked on creating clay vases on a little pottery wheel. This was harder than it looked!

Ancient Greek Model Home

This project never really got off the ground, hence I have no photos. I tasked the children with working together to make a model of an ancient Greek home. The See Inside and Encyclopedia books above contain lovely illustrations of homes in ancient Greece to reference. The children began with enthusiasm but for some reason, interest petered out. They would work on their house when I suggested it but the spark never ignited and the project dragged on and on. At school, there would have been incentives or sanctions if they didn’t complete. Honestly, I struggled with what I should do here. What lesson would it teach if they started things but didn’t finish?! If I spoke to them about houses in ancient Greece, they would happily describe their features. I reminded myself this was about learning and pursuing their interests. They had learned about ancient Greek homes but the enthusiasm wasn’t there to take it further. I decided not to press it and we moved on.

A Greek Feast

Towards the end of the topic, we held a mini Greek feast. We sampled olives and stuffed vine leaves, made homemade tzatziki and my husband made us souvlaki. Delicious!

A Visit to Ancient Greece!

We were lucky enough to travel to Sicily in the early Spring of 2022. Sicily was part of the ancient Greek empire and is home to many historic landmarks of the time. I will share what we did in a later post, but needless to say, this added a beautiful real life experience to our learning on Ancient Greece.

Why adventure? What it means to us

Sicily, March 2022. We have been lucky enough to have some big adventures which have added to our home ed experience.

You might be wondering why this blog is called This Family Means Adventure. I appreciate that someone stumbling across my blog might be expecting posts about travelling to far flung destinations with children. We hope that our not-to-distant future will involve some foreign adventures, but the idea of adventure in our family life sprang from a slightly different desire.

First though, to deal with the name itself. One afternoon, the children came home from a visit with the grandparents. The three children had been playing in the garden, building a fort together. They had used some old rags to create a flag for their fort and were still excited when they got home. My son told me “We made our own flag and motto! Our motto is ‘Our Flag Means Adventure!'” Obviously, I have tweaked their motto slightly to suit our vision for our family. Their motto resonated with because, when we started home educating, ‘Adventure’ had been my word for the year.

I’ve never been someone who really holds with New Year’s Resolutions. The idea of monthly goals appeals to me, I like the idea that its probably a smaller goal and that you can pivot towards something new that appeals, or an unexpected opportunity that arises. But in truth, even committing to a monthly goal would likely end in my guilt over unmet hopes. Life is often just too busy and complicated!

I can’t remember where I came across the idea of a word for the year first of all, perhaps it was The Girl Next Door podcast, which I love. Wherever it came from, the idea of reflecting on what I would like the year to hold, or how I would like to present myself to the coming year, seemed powerful but manageable.

As 2022 approached, I thought about our imminent home educating and what I wanted that to look and feel like. I reflected back on our recent past, with the restrictions of covid and lots of time together at home. I wanted 2022 to feel novel and exciting and above all, I wanted to seek out as many new experiences for us as time and budget would allow. As a word for the year, Adventure seemed like the perfect fit.

And so it was. By the standards of many, our year may not have been that adventurous at all. We were lucky enough to enjoy some wonderful family travel – Sicily in March, Derbyshire in July and the West Coast of Scotland in August. We squeezed in a few trips to Edinburgh too. I hope to write blog posts about some of these adventures over the coming months. As we plan further travel soon, it will be good for my to reflect on these trips and distill any lessons I can.

Nature walks have been some of the small adventures we have enjoyed since home edding.

The real adventure though, was home education itself. Starting felt like a risk – great if it paid off, but with the potential to be difficult and stressful for all of us. Our first year went well and in itself felt like lots of small adventures. Nature walks, joining new groups and meeting new people, stepping away from the way we’d done things and what was expected of us. It took a bit of planning, preparation and nerve, like any good adventure.

The idea is that once a word is embedded for a year, it doesn’t just disappear when the bells ring on December the 31st. It’s there, growing and evolving, as long as it serves. This year, we plan to travel round Europe for 5 months, so the spirit of adventure is still strong in this family for the time being. From the desire for Adventure of 2022 has sprung my word for 2023 – Bravery. Plenty of that required for our upcoming travels.