“Tell me and I forget,
teach me and I may remember,
involve me and I learn.”
~Ben Franklin
The past couple weeks we’ve been diving into ancient history via “Mystery of History“, and we are trying to bring it to life with some fun activities to help us remember. Table time has always been my favorite part of our homeschooling day because it brings all of us together to learn as a family. The littles learn from the bigger ones, the bigger ones learn to teach the little’s and it has the potential to be the recipe for an engaging, memorable and beautiful learning dynamic (let’s pretend, for a moment that I live in a perfect world with no fighting, distractions, impatience or grumpies ever in my home.;) )
Ok, Here are some photos from our activities…..
We learned about the ancient civilization of the Sumerians and their ancient form of writing called Cuneiform writing. We tried it in playdough! It turned out pretty good, though you can’t see it well from the pic.
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| Tahlia usually wants to do what the older’s are doing….very cute! |
Then we learned all about the Babylonians. They built zigurats, which were flat pyramids with staircases that were built as temples to their gods.
We made our own with sugar dominos!
One of the best aspects of this curriculum is seeing how bible history is interwoven so beautifully into traditional history lessons. So often, they are taught separately but, they are ONE. For instance, did you know that Abraham came from the ancient civilization of the Babylonians? The BIBLE is the best and most accurate history text, so why wouldn’t we study the events of the bible along with the events of human history. It’s all connected into one beautiful tapestry. After all, it’s all HIS-story!
One of the most famous Zigurats is the “Tower of Babel”
We learned how early men became proud and wanted to build the highest tower to “show off themselves” and make themselves mightier than God! God knew that this “stairway to heaven” was only leading them further away from Him, and building themselves up. So, God punished them by mixing up their languages and scattering them to different lands.
So, we decided to have ourselves a friendly contest of “who could build the highest sugar domino tower”. Yeah, we got a little prideful…especially this momma, since mine was the highest!!!……ahem, until daddy beat me that night (he’s gonna make sure I document that!!) LOL
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| it fell!!:(( |
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| Ethan came in first (besides mommy and daddy);) |
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| much concentration is required! |
Today we learned about the amazing and mysterious structure known as “Stonehenge”. How amazing to think that the ancient people built this structure with no modern day tools. Each rock was over 28 tons!!! Some were brought to the location from over 300 miles away! Isn’t that crazy?
We made miniature models of the Stonehenge! The kids all agreed that visiting this structure should be our next field trip! England, here we come!
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| first they had to mix black and white playdough to get the right “rock color” |
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| here’s Tahlia’s version: the “animal cracker-henge!” |
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| hard at work! |
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| great job Laylay! |
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| What a great mini- model! |
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| Isabella’s fell over RIGHT after the pic, but now it looks like the way Stonehenge looks today! |
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| Ashy’s structure…I love his droopy rocks! 🙂 |
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| Ethan’s rocks look real! |
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I love sharing these pics, because sometimes when you are in the midst of the chaos of your homeschooling days, you forget that you really are getting things done and accomplishing something, and learning….because of all the …ahem….distractions.:)
I must say that our favorite distraction is a cutie-patootie who is enjoying school time the most of all, and we are enjoying her floating in and out of our lessons….
Especially since this time last year, we spent so much of our day praying her home. It still so unbelievable to us to now have her at the table with us, learning side by side with her siblings. Truly miraculous.
Here she is arranging the calendar according to her “likes”
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| Caught ya! Well, Hello little Miss Tolly-Pop! |
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LOOOOOOVE all these photos.
Love these kiddos!