Chaucer's Rime of Sir Topas

I've been attempting to stream line our learning here. Having two girls, doing two different things all the time was really wearing on me. On us. It was taking us so ever-lovin' long to get things done. So, in an effort to change that, I decided to tweak our reading to have both girls working together. Now, that seems kinda crazy, but this is what we're doing. I read to them from some classical piece of literature. They listen raptly and assure me they've never been more mesmorized than right at that moment. Then, they proceed to draw out pictures of what we read. Next, we put said pictures into a binder, under utterly wonderful labels made by your's truly and voila! Reading. No, not really. They also have a set amount of time for independent reading where they must read on their own and then tell me what they've read about. Grace has opted to stick with her reading book anyway, but I'm forcing Ruth to finish Don Quixote before she's allowed to move on to something else. (Mostly because I want to hear the rest of the book, too, having never read it before.)

So, at this point, we are reading through Chaucer's Canterbury Tales*. Today, we read Chaucer's Rime of Sir Topas. I had not even heard of these stories until I was well into high school. I read the book then, but don't really remember much of it. So, this is thoroughly enjoyable to me. I was excited to see how engrossed the kids were in the story. How they groaned when it didn't get finished because of how Chaucer wrote the book (Alas, we shall never know what happened to Sir Topas!). Then, it was time to discuss. They did pretty well at recalling the information presented. Now, time to draw it.

Ruth, dutifully drawing her pictures for The Rime of Sir Topas

David, Byron, and Grace drawing. The boys don't usually get into the stories as much as the girls, but honestly, this is the first one to have something to do with a topic other than love. Can you really blame them? This one had a knight, a giant...
So, everyone shows me their pictures of the knight, the giant (Ruth's looked strikingly like other portrayals of the devil) and then Byron says proudly, "This is a HIPPO!" So much for that paying attention thing I was so proud of.

*Just to reassure you lit buffs out there, this is a kid friendly version.