Jeopardy - Ancient History Edition!

When we ended our school year last week we decided to have a family Jeopardy competition instead of a unit celebration. June has shaped up to be a very busy month, and it was just easier to do a simple thing to mark the end of our year. And sometimes it's nice to have a change of pace!

I made up questions in four categories, based on our studies for the entire year. They ranged in point value from 100 (timeline 100 question: what does B.C. stand for?) to 500 (what year did the western Roman Empire fall?). No notes were allowed. (note: I am going to laminate this Jeopardy poster so it will be easy to use over and over again, but I am going to change the last category to "Daily Life" instead of "Countries".)


Daddy and the two younger boys made up one team.


And the three older children made up the other team. Team members could confer with each other before the final answer was given. To make it easier I did not have them answer with the question, as in the original TV Jeopardy.


Some of the conferring happened up in the air!


The older children's team won by a narrow margin. It was a fierce competition! Afterward we had cookies and ice cream.



A simple but fun ending to our year!

Year 1, Unit 2 and 3 Celebration!

It finally happened! Last night we had a combined celebration for units 2 and 3 of Tapestry of Grace, Year 1. That covered the time period from shortly after creation to 323 B.C., when Alexander the Great died and the Greek empire was split into three kingdoms. Note to self, that is a LOT of time to cover in one night! Try to do single unit celebrations whenever possible. :-)

We also had to wait on some food and did not start as early as I had hoped, but we had a great time, regardless. I heard from someone else about a really great idea to make passports for our young guests, with places for stickers as they heard/learned about various places throughout the evening. When I suggested it to daughter G, she took the idea and totally ran with it! These are the passports she made. Click on picture to enlarge.



Inside were several pages marked off with squares, one square for each country or civilization we mentioned.


Little Man was our first presenter. I read a short report about Ancient China, and he stood there looking as Chinese as possible. ;-) This is the little jacket I mentioned in my previous post, that I made the pattern for all by myself! I don't think it's authentic to the ancient time period, but I'm pleased with it, and he loves it! (it was nicely pressed prior to the celebration, but he wore it so much around the house it got horribly wrinkled ~ wrinkles on costumes I can live with!)



We had a member of our audience read a "fact card" about the ancient civilization in the Indus Valley (what is now Pakistan and part of Afghanistan). And then we ate. We had chicken fried rice (from the local Chinese carry out restaurant), and chicken tenders cooked in the crockpot with sesame ginger sauce. These foods represented China. We also had a selection of different types of olives, to represent Greece, as well as Greek bread and hummus. Since ancient Greeks did not use a table and chairs for their meals, many of the children ate on the floor!


After eating, we had a visit from a Mayan chief, who told us about life in the ancient Mayan civilization in what is now southern Mexico and Central America.


We then turned our attention to the Archaic period of Ancient Greece. Daughter G portrayed Penelope, long suffering wife of Odysseus, who fought for ten years in the Trojan War and then had a series of mishaps on his voyage home so that the return trip took another ten years! She read an essay she had written in writing class about Penelope.


After hearing from Penelope, we got to hear from Odysseus himself!


We moved our attention to Israel and what was happening with the Hebrews. The Philistine Goliath, of David and Goliath fame, gave a report on his people.


During King Solomon's reign he built a glorious temple in which to worship God. We talked a bit about the daily practice of animal sacrifice for the redemption of sin, and how the priests would blow the shofar (ram's horn) to announce the morning and evening sacrifice, to announce the beginning and end of Sabbath, and to announce or as part of Holy Days and festivals. Thanks to my dear grandpa, now in heaven, who made several trips to Israel during his lifetime, we were able to have a "real" shofar to blow at our celebration! Our two youngest boys can blow it best in our family.



And just fyi, about the costumes.... three of the five children did not have to change clothes completely to portray their second character, they just added something over the first costume. Most of the added pieces were not even sewn! So, super easy.

We learned that Israel split into two kingdoms, and how eventually both kingdoms were conquered by foreign nations. When Judah succumbed to Babylon, a young man by the name of Daniel was exiled to Babylon along with thousands of fellow Hebrews. Daniel told us the story of how he ate only vegetables and drank water for three weeks and ended up being the most healthy looking of all the captives in King Nebuchadnezzar's court!


After Daniel, we were graced by Esther, Queen of Persia, who told us the story of how God used her to help deliver the Jews from annihilation, and how remembering that deliverance is celebrated as the Feast of Purim each year (celebrated on March 20! So we just missed it!). We added a purple poncho over her Greek chiton (pronounced ki-ten) and a long, sheer, purple veil to transform her into Queen Esther.


The Persians later fought against the Greeks. Son G portrayed a Greek soldier from Sparta, during the time of the Peloponnesian Wars (wars between Sparta and Athens).


Son L then portrayed Alexander the Great, who in 12 short years managed to subdue nations and grow a vast empire, spreading Greek culture to every place he conquered. He died in 323 B.C., which is where our studies in Unit 3 ended.


Last but not least, and slightly out of order, we had son C portray the Greek citizen Pythagoras, best known for developing the Pythagorean Theorem (do you remember what that is??). We wanted to portray someone from the Golden Age of Greece, during the height of Greece's philosophical, mathematical, and scientific contributions, and son C choose Pythagoras. His costume required no sewing at all (just folding and cutting, and pins at the shoulders) and the "key" pattern on the bottom edges of his tunic was drawn on with permanent marker. :-)


We displayed just a few of the many books we enjoyed during these two units, as well as some of the children's hands on projects.


Friends and guests!




It was a very fun evening! Unit celebrations make such good memories. If you've never done a unit celebration and have been on the fence, you need to just DO it! It doesn't have to be elaborate or hard. Ours never flow quite as smoothly as I envision them to in my head, but they are fun and the children LOVE them! Our daughter was completely enamored with the costumes this time and said they were the best ones we've had yet.... which is pretty high praise from a teenage girl. :-)

I am thankful for the support of family and friends who always want to come to our unit celebrations, but even if it's just for your own family, you won't regret doing one!

Making Unit Celebration Costumes (Year 1, Units 2 and 3)

We had our unit celebration(s) today!! Pics from that coming soon, but here is a little teaser....


Sculpey clay teeth, made by daughter G, for a Mayan necklace.


Me, sewing! I am *not* a seamstress, but I can sew a seam! I was actually quite pleased with a little Chinese jacket I made for Little Man. I realized I was not a good enough seamstress to make up anything as complicated as having sleeves, without a pattern. As I did not have a pattern small enough for Little Man, I made my own out of tissue paper! A front, a back, and a sleeve piece, and voila'! It worked out GREAT, and turned out to be the most "finished" looking costume of them all.


We needed a couple different shields. For a Philistine shield we covered son G's Captain America shield from last Halloween with tan/leathery fabric....


....and to make a bigger Greek hoplite shield we covered poster board with more of the leathery looking fabric. Daughter G colored the boar emblem on it with permanent markers.


Son G made his Greek hoplite helmet by paper mache-ing a balloon, blown up to slightly larger than the circumference of his head.


He drew his face on the balloon first, so he'd know what not to cover.


When it was dried to just slightly damp and was still pliable, we fit it more exactly to his head. Then we let it dry completely before spray painting it with bronze paint.

Daughter G planned all the accessories for all the costumes, and did a wonderful job helping to make many of them! We had a great time portraying characters from Unit 2 and Unit 3!

Our Week In Review - Ancient Israel

It's been a while since I've posted about school. After our very relaxing Christmas break, we eased back in to our school routine with a couple of half days. We have 30 minutes of book time every day (pleasure reading, and everyone reads, even me!) but on those half days we spent even more time with our beloved books.


We spent the first two weeks back at school finishing up Unit two of Tapestry of Grace Year 1, which took us through the period of the judges in Ancient Israel, and into Saul's kingship. We spent a lot of time reading I Samuel and talking about Saul's shift from predominately good to predominately bad. So many interesting stories and concepts ~ such as the Lord himself sending a "troubling" spirit (some versions say "evil" spirit) upon Saul, after he had disobeyed and ceased to find favor in the eyes of the Lord.

This is son C's Saul booklet.




In case you can't read the words below, C thought that Saul's positive traits were: he was impressive, God changed his heart, God's Spirit was upon him, he prophesied, he was a good fighter. His negative traits were: disobedient, proud, impatient, foolish.



We have found a new morning routine that is working pretty well and allows me to spend time with Little Man doing kindergarten work every day. We got to the point in his math book where he needed to review the concepts each day (rather than doing a week's worth of work in one day as we did for a while last fall). He spent two weeks learning the number value of each of the colored blocks/rods, and now is working on addition!


Snuggling together and watching a science video.


Daughter G is plugging away in her physical science book, and if she stays on track she is set to finish by the end of May. She did a super cool experiment this week involving air pressure. First she lit a candle that was set in the middle of some colored water (colored just so we could see the water better).


Then she covered the candle with a glass. As the candle used up the oxygen inside the glass, water from outside the glass was "sucked" in to fill the void.


Just before the candle burned out, nearly all the water was inside the glass. Can you see the difference in the outside water level vs. the inside water level? It was really cool to watch, and she explained the process very well to the rest of the family.


At the end of the week, body paint during bath time!


Also this week, I cooked an entire five pound bag of dry black beans, which made the equivalent of 12 cans! I will use them in recipes for the next several weeks.

We made some plans for our Unit 2 unit celebration, but I think we will need to hold off on having it until after daddy gets a new job, so we will probably end up combining our unit 2 celebration and our unit 3 celebration into one.

Last week was a week off of history studies (we did all other schoolwork) while we played a little catch up. Now we are looking forward to starting unit 3 tomorrow!

Our Week in Review - Ancient Greece

So much "life" has been happening lately that I have oodles of things to post about, and school has taken a backseat for awhile. But I've had this post in my drafts for over a week and I'd like to finish it and move on to other things!

Recently we spent two weeks learning about Ancient Greece. Not the classical period of Ancient Greece, but before that... during the time of the Trojan War, Odysseus and his odyssey, Jason and his golden fleece. We learned about the beginnings of the greek myths of gods and goddesses, which were well formed by the time the classical period of Greece began. Our middle schoolers read abridged versions of both the Iliad and the Odyssey. It was very fascinating and we all enjoyed it very much!

At the end of our first week learning about Ancient Greece, we enjoyed Greek food while watching the movie: The Odyssey (made for tv version starring Armand Asanti ~ we ended up watching over a couple nights because it's nearly 3 hours long, and fyi if you ever watch it with children, we had to skip over a few suggestive parts, so you definitely need to preview). Our dinner consisted of Greek style lamb and rice, with hummus and bread on the side. You can find the recipe here on my cooking blog. It was absolutely delicious!!



We also did a couple really fun crafts. The first was painting Greek pots. Pottery was not only functional but also became an exquisite art form. Scenes of daily life were often painted on pottery, which is one way we know so much about the Ancient Greeks today. And different areas had slightly different processes for making pottery, so when archaeologists find pots in one area that they know were made elsewhere, it gives them insight into trade routes, trading partners, and types of things traded (depending on the type of pot).

So to begin this project we first looked at pictures of pottery in our history books.


Each child was given a small clay flower pot and sketched their picture on it. Then they painted!





Little Man decided to add handles to his pot. Didn't they turn out wonderfully?




The second project we did was make mosaics. Below is what the boys used. We chose the "under the sea" mosaic kit since the Greeks were surrounded by water. Beautiful mosaics have been found in Greek ruins, and it was they who introduced this art form to the Romans. The Romans took this idea and perfected it, making amazing mosaics that look like photographs!

If you have a child who is focused enough to sit for an hour or more doing one activity if it really interests them, and you need to keep them busy while you work on a project of some kind, I highly recommend these peel and stick mosaics! The picture is already "painted" on, and each square is numbered so the child knows what color of sticky backed foam to place on it. It's not hard, just a bit tedious. However, my boys were so enthralled with this activity, they happily worked for nearly two hours on their masterpieces! (yes, even Little Man!)








Daughter G did a different type of mosaic, and this was more involved and took more time.


She sketched her picture and taped it to her desk under a lamination sheet, sticky side up. Then she placed colored squares of paper on the lamination sheet. Many of them were not small enough so she had to cut them down to the right size.


Didn't it turn out beautifully?


All of the children had fun and did a great job!


Now when we come to the classical period of Ancient Greece we will have lots of mental "hooks" on which to hang new information!