Nicole Alderman

Because I couldn't find any free Ogham worksheet that I liked, I made my own!. Some of the parents in my homeschool co-op like to take worksheets home, so I try to offer some to go along with every lesson. Sometimes, I can find them online for free, but it's getting harder because (A) a lot of things are paywalled, and (B) a lot of stuff is generated by artificial intelligence. But, hey, I realized I can make worksheets in Word, so I'll just make some for the kids if I can't find them in the wild!

Oh dear, I just realized I'd saved the images as PNGs rather than JPG! Click on them to enlarge them, right click them, and then click "Save image." If that doesn't work, just use the PDF!

I've been trying to find hands-on activities to go along with studying (King?) Arthur and pre-Anglo-Saxon Britton.  I've decided maybe it'd be fun for the kids to learn to write/carve in Ogham!

Ogham was the writing system used by the Irish from around 300-600s. We find stones carved with it in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. There were a lot of Irish people coming over to Britain during the time period King Arthur would have lived, so I could see them using Ogham--maybe even using it to write secret messages!

For fun, I made a series of worksheets for kids to use--including an alphabet reference.

I've benefited a lot from the free resources people have put online, so I want these activity pages to be free to anyone who needs or wants them.

That's so cool Jocelyn! We were just in Everett and almost stopped by the Arboretum. Now we have an even bigger reason to go! My husband and I used to go there all the time before we moved away from the city, but I don't think we've visited it since our son was 2...10 years ago!

Not an activity, but I did find these hilarious videos about this period of time:





It doesn't really help me with Celtic/Welsh activities, though. I am leaning toward carving their name in Ogham on sticks and maybe even pencils. I tried carving a pencil edge with scissors, and it didn't work well. But, they could always mark it with a permanent marker. Scissors carve into sticks quite nicely, though.

Tom Scott just released a video on dry stone walling!

Anne Miller wrote:It seems so easy, they mix it up, throw it into hot grease and what ever it is puffs up and looks yummy.

From what I understand, there's only two ways to get bread/dough/batter to puff up:

(A) A chemical reaction of an alkaline (like baking soda) plus an acid (like vinegar). These are the "quick breads," muffins, and fluffy pancakes. You can use different alkaline things, like lye or baking soda. You can use different acidic things, like: vinegar, juice, coffee, molasses, cream of tartar, yogurt, buttermilk, etc. The alkaline thing is usually the hardest to find. It sounds like you've got lots of it, so that makes it easy. Just add any sort of acid (like from Leigh lovely list) and you'll get a puffy reaction. This is how I make most of my breads and cakes, because my husband can't have yeast. I usually just use whatever acidic thing I have on hand to go with my baking soda.

(B) Yeast. This can be store bought yeast or a wild yeast or a sourdough starter someone gave you. I don't have much experience with this. This is probably what the people in the videos are using, though.

Both of those create little air bubbles in the dough or batter, which is what makes things puffy and yummy.

Anne Miller wrote:All I can find is flat bread and pita bread.

Yep, without some sort of thing to make air bubbles, you'll get flat breads and crackers and hard tack. You need something to make bubbles to get puffy bread, cakes, muffins, pancakes, etc.

I always go for grass-finished, because I want my cows to have lives out on the fields. If they're finished on grass, they got to be on the fields--at least for their last few months.

Sam, that sounds like a delightful way to get both a canvas and a frame that match, for cheap! I'm not sure all paint can go on those mass-printed canvases. I remember being taught that some paints can go on top of others (you can put oil on acrylic, but not the other way around, for example). But, it's a really good option for those that paint with a matching medium!

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