In 14hundred and ninety-two...

and 93 and 98 and 1502, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Those last 3 voyages don't get as much press. Columbus was a complicated character, we discovered today in our research into his other voyages. Deeply religious, cruel at times, determined, resillient, a poor governor, loyal, depressed....there is much more to Christopher Columbus than 3 ships and a poem.

We had fun reading about him today and even more fun having "holiday school" activities to mark the day. I bought a fun guide called "History of Holidays" from Homeschool In the Woods and this was our first activity from it. We are keeping all of our activities (the non-perishable ones, anyway) in a big binder so at the end of the year we will have a whole book of holiday celebrations!

working hard

mixing dough

 We made two different kinds of cookies today. The first is a Spanish cookie called Polvorones, made with ground almonds. The second is an Italian cookie (a nod to Columbus' roots) called Italian Cheese Cookies, made with ricotta cheese and a little glaze. They are both tasty, but the Italian ones are DELISH.

Italian cookies on the left, Spanish cookies on the right

Joshua painted a flag representative of the Royal Standard flag Columbus planted in San Salvadore on his first voyage

We made a map with 4 overlays showing the routes taken on the 4 different voyages

One of the most fun activities of the day was the spice chart! Daddy got to participate in this one with us. They each got to smell a spice to see if they could guess what it was, then we looked up the origins of the spices and any interesting information we could find about them. Some of those spices were more valuable than gems in Columbus' time!



A happy boy with his completed projects