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Here is a great little video my Uncle made of Cassius’ most recent Knight Camp performance. Cassius really enjoyed himself this time, and commented that he could tell that all his hard work was paying off. He felt pretty good about defeating two of his teachers also.
Cassius was generously offered a grant to attend Academie Duello’s Knight camp this summer. He was the only student taking the camp for the third time, so he got an hour a day of private falconry lessons. A mother described her son’s experience with the falcons to me as “life changing”, and I’d have to agree, it was amazing.
Cassius hasn’t got around to learning how to tie shoes yet, but now I know I don’t have worry since he can tie a one handed falconers knot with his eyes closed.
Cassius’ teacher said he would make a wonderful veterinarian, and of course he wants his own falcon now! I never expected Cassius’ love animals and love of fencing would meet.
We had a lovely two hour sail in the sun last Saturday aboard The Munin, a half size replica of a 9th century Norwegian viking longboat. The Munin sails on weekends from the Heritage Harbour at the Vancouver Maritine Museum. The suggested donation is $10/adult, $5/kids or $20 for a family. It was more than worth it.
More information at www.munin.ca (this website seems to be down right now,
but it is usually functioning)
It was a lot of work to row out into the harbour. Paris was sad at first that he couldn’t row, but once I got fired from my rowing post ( I pushed when I should have pulled one too many times) he felt a bit better. Once the beautiful sail was up we got going faster than the crew had ever gone before.
The Munin
A half size replica of the Gokstad ship.
Type: Viking longship
LOA: 40 ft
Built: 2001 (Launched 2001-07-07)
Owner: British Columbia Viking Ship Project
Lying: Vancouver, B.C., Canada
For some reason our family seems to love playing games with big maps. We like to dream that one day we’ll get to travel to all places we visit on the boards.
Catan Histories: Struggle for Rome
This is our new favourite game inspired of course by Cassius’ interest in Rome. This is one of those games that you could leave out (if you didn’t have a Paris) and play for days.
This Spring Break Cassius attended knight camp again for the second time and was promoted from a Squire to a Man at Arms. This time round there were twice as many students. Cassius really noticed that he had to wait around a lot more than last summer. He had a new appreciation for small class sizes by the end of the week.
He did get some one on one teaching which he really enjoyed. At the week end presentation the director said that Cassius only had to be shown how to do something once and he did right the first time.
Rome is another BBC/ HBO series that we really enjoyed. We watched two seasons in two weeks! Cassius is totally into Rome now and is going to be a Roman Centurion for Halloween. The week after we finished watching the series we had a no TV week and Cassius spent all his time reading about Rome in his 
Usborne History Encyclopedia.
The series is extremely well written. It really shows what the day to day life of a Roman would have been like. The story is also much more accurate than many past stories about Rome which have been portrayed on Film. Of course, I think they did take many dramatic liberties. And I wouldn’t recommend it for every kid; there’s lots of swearing, violence and sex in it. I love history, and a good story always inspires to me to go find out what really happened!
These pictures are from our trip to West Coast Railway Heritage Park in Squamish. Paris was in heaven.
Cassius is very interested in cavemen right now. His dad rented the DVD Quest for Fire. “Haven’t you seen that?” I said, “Cassius is going to be board to death.” But I was wrong – again – he loved it! He asked a lot of questions and really wanted to understand the cavemen’ s behaviour and experience.
We watched the BBC series Walking with Cavemen last night and really enjoyed it.
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Professor Robert Winston meets Lucy, the first upright ape, and follows her ancestors on the three-million-year journey to civilisation. Broadcast in 2003, Walking with Cavemen combined special effects with the latest scientific theories, to show us what it really means to be human.
