This week we started watching Dan Cruickshank's 'Adventures in Architecture'. I had bought this DVD before the Summer and I hadn't really figured out when to fit it in. This week I have had a cold and have felt really rough. Sitting on the sofa letting the TV entertain the children is just what I needed. There are a couple of sure signs that the children have enjoyed something: asking to do it again, and telling daddy all about it. So I knew I was onto a winner when, on Friday morning, my middle son was asking if we could watch some more architecture and, later, my daughter was recounting a Mayan bloodletting ceremony to her father over our evening meal.
I was expecting lots of beautiful buildings, (there's kind of a clue in the title!), but I wasn't expecting such a vibrant mix of geography, history and religion. In two episodes we have met Buddhism, Hinduism, Inuit culture, the Catherine Palace in St Petersburg, the Egyptian Pharaohs, Mayan human sacrifice and an artistic delight of a cemetery in Genoa.
(There was one building, a temple in India but I can't remember, that was covered in graphic sculptures of people, in the words I used to explain to my nine-year-old, 'kissing and cuddling'! Not sure what the younger two made of it, but my eldest did keep glancing at me sideways to see my reaction. I debated switching it off, but decided that this would make more of as issue of a subject that, I believe, benefits from being de-mystified and discussed openly. So I guess that added another 'subject' to the mix!)
One thing I love about Home Ed is the way learning all ties together, not divided along subject lines but all thrown in as one glorious feast to be devoured and savoured and digested over time.
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