Ancient Greece!

Well, B's afternoon lessons have been evolving.  My original plan was to do different subjects every month, but it's becoming clear that some things - like physics, chemistry, and ancient history - could easily fill three or four months. So I'm adjusting as we go.

Beatrice is still working on both physics and chemistry (more on that later) but these days she is OBSESSED with ancient Greece.

It was a little hard to know where to start with world history, but I decided for now to open with the Minoans, even if we eventually circle back to Egypt, Assyria, and other things.

Depictions of the Minoan Earth Mother Goddess

Making a Minoan fresco by painting on wet Plaster of Paris

Then we moved on to Mycenae, the Trojan War, the Dorians, and finally, Athens.

Modeling ancient Greek drinking vessels like amphora and krater

Carving Zeus out of a giant block of soap

Beatrice's favorite gods are Zeus and Hades - the other day when we passed a small church in our neighborhood, she asked if she could go in to make an offering to Zeus. She also loves Odysseus.  And at school on Friday, she dedicated the worksheet she was doing "To Demeter."

Early this month I took Beatrice on a trip to the Getty Villa in Malibu, a reproduction of a villa in Herculaneum filled with ancient Greek and Roman art. We had so much fun! We looked at everything in the museum, we had lunch, and we played in the museum's small but very well-designed kids' area. I used to love The Getty Villa (then, just The Getty) when I was a kid, too.

Beatrice walked around carrying a huge armload of information she'd printed out from the internet about gods and goddesses.

Kneeling before Zeus

 

 

In the kid's area, they had this great shadow screen that put your image on the side of an amphora (an idea I'm stealing for Beatrice's Trojan War-themed birthday party next month).

 

B with sword and shield

They also had write-on vessels you could decorate with dry erase pens - here Beatrice is drawing the story of Perseus and Medusa.

 

 

And today, Beatrice performed her classical play, The Tragedy of Tantalus, complete with Greek masks and a chorus. (And yes, I know Dev and I are wearing Roman costumes, not Greek, but that's what we had on hand.)

Painting the set, Mt. Olympus

 

Dev as Tantalus

Arthur as a chorus member

Zeus scolds Tantalus

The chorus

Dev with his two Tantalus masks, happy and sad

Then we had a Mediterranean feast of wine, lamb kofta, lavash bread, feta cheese, two kinds of eggplant spread, olives, and barley, with grapes, pomegranates, and baklava from Sarkis for dessert.

B's Greek vessels decorated the table.

 

Not real wine

The kids were delighted by the fact that the ancient Greeks didn't use utensils to eat.

And it's not just Beatrice who loves Greece now, Arthur is getting excited about it as well. Tonight at bath time he told me he was only going to use a few bath toys so his bath would have the minimalist, classic style of ancient Greece.

Here are some great resources I've found for teaching little kids about ancient Greece:

1. I highly recommend the (sadly out of print) book, Ancient Greece! 40 Activities to Experience This Wondrous Age.
There are a few pretty cheesy parts (including The Iliad told in the form of a rap), but the craft and project ideas are really good. That's where I got the idea for both the Minoan goddess figure and the fresco.
2. B loves The Magic Treehouse series, so this month she read Hour of the Olympics and Vacation Under the Volcano (about Pompeii) and the accompanying nonfiction fact guides on Greece and Rome.
3. The same author who writes The Magic Treehouse series wrote a six-part children's retelling of The Odyssey that's excellent.
4. We've checked out dozens of books on ancient Greece from the library but a few Beatrice liked were The Greeks, You Are in Ancient Greece, Tales of the Trojan War, and the Profiles in Greek and Roman Mythology series.
5. Lastly, the website History for Kids is great. There are also lots of Greek gods and goddesses materials online, including coloring sheets, word searches, crossword puzzles, etc.

Also, I made up some worksheets of my own that I'll post here if anyone wants to use them:

Ancient Greece chronology (PDF)
Ancient Greece geography (PDF), which I used with this blank map of ancient Greece
Ancient Greece: historical figures (PDF)
Ancient Greece: mythological figures (PDF)

Happy Birthday, Shackleton!

Birthday at the dog park

We got Shack ten years ago today (meaning he's probably 11 or 12 years old). As Dev said, we've had Shack longer than we've had our house, had kids, or been married.

We celebrated by buying Shack a doughnut at Krispy Kreme (he ate the entire thing in one bite) and by taking him to the dog park.  Then after dinner we presented him his dog food "cake" to share with his friends Cromwell and Sancho.

 

Happy Birthday, Shack!

Beatrice's First Poem

Beatrice wrote her first poem today, for a contest at school.

Grunions

Grunions are shiny, scaly blue fish
That sometimes go up on the beach,
Wanting to stay out of seals' reach.
They also like to lay eggs on the wet sand.
When they are done, they'll return to their ocean land!

 

The accompanying picture shows that if there were no grunion, there would also be no seals, sharks, or larger fish (ie., the food chain).

Your Occasional Round-up of Beatrice and Arthur Quotes

Beatrice

"It's not fair that people don't like Hades, he's just doing his job."

Beatrice solved a simple arithmetic problem and declared, "I am Paul Erdös!"

Beatrice made up a story where a child is bitten by red ants and starts to cry and his mother says, "Well, what can I say? These things happen sometimes," which I love because that is exactly what I would say if one of my children were bitten by red ants.

Beatrice was sitting in the corner reading while I was volunteering at the school book fair. Suddenly she stood up in the middle of the fair, panicked, and shouted, "Mom! Mom! Tell me about the heat death of the universe!"

Beatrice composed a piano song called, "Gloomy Night, Tangle of Stars."

"I would draw Jesus and God, and God would be just an outline that I would draw with a clear crayon, because God is a spirit."

Beatrice, reciting the story, "An old lady swallowed an owl. Can you imagine it? Imagine it NOW."

Beatrice, thoughtfully and out of nowhere, at the park: "If I could choose between dying or living forever, I would choose to die."

Arthur

Arthur: When you're angry at someone, you should not let the sun set on your anger.
Summer: That's good advice, where did you hear that?
Arthur: From a movie. So if you love someone, you can't let the sun set if you're still angry at them. [pause] So how do you prevent the sun from setting?

Arthur, with a list of demands for what he wanted to do that day: It's a little chilly, so I'd like to go to a playground that's indoors, has a covered parking garage, and where I can learn and play.
Summer: Why does it have to have a covered garage?
Arthur: I don't want to get chilly walking from the car to the playground. Also, not Giggles n Hugs, the noises there are too loud for me, I can't concentrate.

Also, every time Arthur tells on Beatrice or William, he prefaces it with, "I'm sorry to tell you this, but . . . " as in, "I'm sorry to tell you this, but William was playing with Beatrice's dollhouse."

Beatrice and I were talking in the car when Arthur shouted, "STOP EVERYTHING! I'm going to tell you how a seed grows."

Arthur kept begging me to get him a treat at Target until I told him to absolutely stop asking for anything.
Arthur (singing): Can I have a treat? Can I have a treat? . . .
Summer: Stop asking for something!
Arthur: I'm not asking, I'm singing, this is a song.
Summer: No it's not, you're just asking for something by singing.
Arthur: No, I didn't write this song, this is a Beyoncé song. [then singing] "Can I have a treat? This is Beyoncé talking..."

Arthur, to me: "Let me ask you a question: did you want us to hate this dinner? Then why did you put the most disgusting ingredients in it?"

After I asked Arthur to share his toys with a rowdy boy, he said haughtily, "Sharing is for my friends, and he is definitely not my friend."

Arthur was listing all the things he wants - I don't remember why. But it included action figures, a waterslide at his birthday party, and dinner at Fuddrucker's. I asked him if there was anything else and he said, "Well, I've never been on a fire truck..."

And this, which might be the most Arthur thing he has ever said - he was pretending to be a superhero named Mr. Superhero. I made up a scenario for him to pretend to save someone, and he sighed and said, "It's the weekend, some other superhero will handle it."

Later he pretended to be an archaeologist who wasn't working because it was Sunday. He explained he doesn't work on weekends, on Passover, or on Pajama Day (the day they wear pajamas to his preschool).

Beatrice and Arthur

Arthur, getting dressed in the morning: Beatrice, am I beautiful?
Beatrice, wearily: Yes, Arthur.
Arthur: Okay, but how beautiful?

There is a book of ghost stories in Arthur and Beatrice's room and every night they have a battle, shifting it from the Fiction to the Nonfiction shelf and back again. They also think that moving the book makes it so, so when they're feeling brave they will move it to the NF shelf until they scare themselves and move it back.

And this, which I think perfectly encapsulates how Beatrice and Arthur are different. The kids were mad at Dev because he and Travis went to Din Tai Fung without them.
Arthur told me I could probably do better and should consider marrying someone else.
Beatrice suggested - casually, without malice - that we should "smash [Dev's] brain, because his brain is what makes these bad thoughts."

Sunday in Santa Barbara

Today we took a little road trip to Santa Barbara, about 90 minutes north of L.A.

 

Sancho on a road trip

 

We started off with a walk around State Street and down to Stearns Wharf to visit the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum Sea Center.

 

 

The Sea Center

 

William loved this fish tunnel.

Museum staff dip buckets directly into the ocean below and draw up seawater and living animals to show the kids.

 

 

William runs amok with a seal puppet.

Then we went to lunch at Padaro Beach Grill, a seaside café with a wide open lawn that runs down to the beach and a big sand area for kids to play in while they eat.

Beatrice reading on the lawn

 

View from the restaurant

Fish tacos

 

Restaurant play area

Then we walked down to the beach. This was Sancho's first time on a beach and he loved it - even if he kept trying to drink seawater.

Seawater is not for drinking.

 

 

Sitting in a shallow depression filled with seawater, never felt more alive

Then we went to McConnell's for ice cream and to the carousel and playground in Chase Palm Park.

 

 

 

And then finally back home.