Welcome to Greek Week! The last three days (and for the next three days) we're celebrating all things Ancient Greece. It's part of our Lessons By Dad series, but sometimes Asa needs a little help from his lovely wife to make things a little more awesome. The Greeks have lots to cover, so we turned it into a theme week (and even after six days, I feel like there's so much I had to leave out!)
So, this blog might be a little off, because we have LOTS of ongoing projects, I put pictures of cordinating projects together, even though they span a few days to make things a little more cohesive. First up we watched the crash course history video on the Greeks (love those!), then we constructed our very own Greece in the baby pool! Oh, and we all wore hats, because thats what they did in Greece. Pale skin was considered much more attractive than tans, so hats were pretty popular.
I had made some flags/pictures that we put in playdough to stand up.
Then the boys took rocks and constructed the area of Ancient Greece (Peloponnesus, Attica, Crete, Asia Minor)
Then we labeled them!
Then we plopped down some other important places. For these we had the flag I made, AND we found a little prop. (Fun fact: this guy from Lord of the Rings has passed as President's Hayes and Grant AND now Zeus.)
Mr. Incredible worked as Colossus in Rhodes.
We constructed Mount Olympus out of playdough.
Thebes got a flower.
And you can't see it, but back there Troy got a horse. Sparta got a Warrior, that kind of thing. Then we labeled the water and poured in our sea.
To illustrate how every area of Greece saw itself as it's own place, the boys each made their own coins for their own land. We used playdough and then they all used different things to imprint the coins.
Hayden-panesus is apparently pretty rich, look at all those coins!
I've been trying to focus on one aspect of Ancient Greece each day. One day we talked about daily life in Greece.
The Greeks were fans of games, and this one called knucklebones was one of them. We used air dry clay to make the bones, and when they are dry we'll play the game (so stay tuned, I'll tell you how it works then)
They also made yo-yos (we have one drying from air dry clay too, I'll let you know how that works out), and hacky sacks. We made our own hacky sacks from some balloons and rice.
You can probably figure out the directions, it's not too difficult.
But the boys really liked them!
(Even if they weren't very good at it)
We also talked about Greek Theater. We each made our own mask (some of us even did them double sided like in Greece!)
You can't talk about Greece without talking about Greek Mythology. We've been learning about all the Gods and Heroes. I don't know if I just wasn't paying attention, or if we never covered it in school, but my knowledge of Greek Gods was severely lacking. Asa took that one on, and I learned all kinds of new stuff too.
We spent three days talking about the Gods and heroes and constructing theses awesome lapbooks. Asa would tell the story, and then they would add to their lapbook.
We also used the board to try and show how they were related, and add some information. I made little coloring pages for each one with their name, what they were the god of, and their roman counterpart. We also colored those in as we went through them.
We finished the board today. It can't stay too long, because on Monday I'll need it for a president.
We took all our pieces to our lapbooks and put them together today, too.
Oh, and this whole week, we're working on making Greek vases!I forgot to take a picture when we first started, but basically it's some cardboard taped in the shape we wanted, taped to a balloon in the middle, and more cardboard up top.
Then we made paper mache paste. Don't mind the little black pieces in there, I might have burned a little too the bottom of the pot. But, I assure you, the paste works just fine!
You'll see an absence of Peyton here. He HATES paper mache, and he had a small cut on his finger he was freaking out about getting all messy. So, I constructed his for him to paint at the end of the week. I'm nice like that.
Once we got one layer on, they dried overnight. I figured for the bottom, I would just cut some cardboard, tape it on, and we could paper mache over it, but the plates I put them on ended up sticking to the bottoms.
So, we just cut around them.
And paper mached over them, so we have a bottom to our vases. Tonight we plan to put the second layer on so it can dry overnight, and then tomorrow we'll pop the balloon and hope it keeps it's shape. Fingers crossed!
Oh, and we've been eating lots of Greek food. We've had Greek Chicken and Potatoes....
.....Greek Pizzas....
(If you're wondering, woman and children usually ate on stools, and men got to eat on the couch, so we did that one day)
And we had Greek Chicken Pitas with Greek pasta!
Today our focus was on writing. We talked about Greek root words and did a little exercise in finding Greek root words we use today.
We also worked on making some wax tablets that were used in Ancient Greece. (I thought this was a really cool project.
We just so happened to get an Easter package in the mail yesterday, and it came in three boxes the same size that I could easily use for the books. I cut off the outsides and then made a frame on one of the insides.
The boys painted them.
And then we melted some wax in a can on the stove.
We poured the wax in the frames little by little. (You have to do a bunch of layers for this to work)
What you're left with is a wax tablet! (Worth noting that I should have done the frames and the wax on BOTH sides, but I wanted to make sure I had enough wax, so we only did the one side.
Then the boys used the Greek alphabet to try and write their names in the wax. We used pencils with missing lead to write, and we did it when it was still a little warm to make it easier. It's hard to see the writing in the pictures, but they really did come out pretty cool.
I am off to quiz the boys on the geography of ancient greece out at the baby pool, and then to play in some more paper mache. I'll be back in a few more days to catch you up on the rest of Greek Week!
Besides all that, Monday we have a very important birthday, everyone's fav: Good Old TJ! It took me three hours to do all the planning for it yesterday, yikes!
Next Up: Columns! Togas! Olympics!
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