Awesome History: Julius Caeser

 Our art project was dressing up as Romans.  I have to admit, this was super easy for us because I still had all the costumes from our Plutarch party, including the adult ones (which the teens needed to wear). But, really, Roman wear is simple.

Here are Leena and Klenda, each dressed in a pallium and stolla.

The pallium is a tube, pinned at the shoulders (the long sleeves are non historical undershirts).  In certain eras, the pallium is folded over at the top like the one Leena is wearing.

Either pallium can be wrapped with crisscrossing ribbons to give a belt and the top shape.

 The stolla is a shawl which can be worn like a regular shawl or elegantly draped over the back of the hair.

We only used color on the stolla (random sheets of extra fabric), but in real life, the palliums would have been colorful, too.  In fact, senators wore white with a purple stripe, and candidates wore all white (to show they were "candid" - "candida" is white in Latin).

Yeah, I know, all the classical statues are white, but that turns out to be because all the paint has worn off.  Romans liked bright colors!

Here we have Oob in a himation - a simplified toga.  Why yes, it is just a sheet wrapped around him!  True togas are easy to replicate (just sew two sheets end to end) and fiendishly difficult to put on.

The actual toga wearers were the senators, and they had slaves trained specifically for the task.

We also have a friend dressed as a praetorian guard!

Here is the same friend with Zorg (also in a himation), looking at a Lego Star Wars book (possibly not historically accurate).

The active activity was "When in Rome," kind of a Simon Says game where everyone has to imitate the Emperor player.

The food was a Roman feast!  We had dates, grapes, hard boiled eggs and flat round bread with honey.

Story of the World chapters 34-37.

Awesome History: India and China

 Our "active" activity was building the Great Wall out of cardboard bricks and staffing it with attacking and defending Bionicles.

I have to admit, my original thought was a taller wall that the kids could come crashing through like Mongol invaders, but  this was cooler,especially since they put up watchtowers!

Our art project was sculpting our own terracotta warriors.










The kids were very intrigued that each of the 3000 warriors had unique faces and hairstyles, so, naturally, each of theirs was also unique!

 We had a dentist's appointment coming up that afternoon, so instead of a specific snack, we had a quick lunch of rice and General Tsao's Chicken.


Story of the World chapters 30-33.

Awesome History: Greeks and Romans

This was another combined class, because we won't have class next week.

Our art project was making mosaics with post-it notes: easy peasy lemon squeezy, but definitely a temporary installation, especially if the glue on your post-its is a little old!






Still, it lasted long enough for pictures, and it was fun, easy and open ended.

I really like projects like this where we don't tell the kids what to make - it lets them be more creative.

This was about  the technique the Romans and Greeks used: making pictures out of shapes, so it didn't matter what they chose to represent.

And they came up with all sorts of fun and unique images.

Come to think of it, they represented the same kinds of things the Greeks and Romans did: battles, animals, and people.

 The active activity was gladiator fights.

I decided to add realism by randomly throwing wild (stuffed) animals into the arena.

No stuffed animals were harmed in the making of this picture!

And our snack was nectar and ambrosia, the food of the gods!

Around here, ambrosia is a kind of fruit salad with marshmallows and covered in whipped cream (or Cool Whip, which is fake whipped cream).  We used pears, apples, plums, cherries, and bananas.

That went over well!


Story of the World chapters 23-29.

Awesome History: Minoans, Persians, Early Greeks and the Olympics

 This was a class that combined two weeks since we had missed a week with sickness in the co-op.

I had intended to do a baking soda and vinegar volcano (for the eruption that wiped out the Minoans), but it got skipped for lack of time.

We acted out the story of Solon, Croesus, and Cyrus.

For our art project, we wrote our names using the Greek alphabet.

And then we had the Table Setting Olympics!

Which we do every six years, evidently.

For a snack we had pomegranates, hummus, feta, olives, and crackers. Yum!

This was Story of the World chapters 18-22.

Awesome History: Phoenicians, Asssyrians, Babylonians

This class we focused on the Phoenicians with their colored glass.  Of course, they were making colored glass objects, not really windows, but we made windows.

Why?  Because: easy fabulousness!

We took clear contact paper and made a frame out of black strips of paper.

You just cut strips and press them on the contact paper's sticky side.

Then the kids cut out objects in black paper (my idea was a tree, but they could choose anything).

Then we pressed torn pieces of tissue paper in for the color.



If you wanted to be more authentic, you could cover a jar with tissue paper and mod podge.


In my case, I was itching for some fall decorations.




For the active activity, we turned to the ever warring Babylonians and Assyrians.

Nerf battle!

This went really, really well, no doubt because they have been practicing faithfully for the last 15 years. The things we do for education!

The snack was intended to be pita, hummus and figs, but we didn't get that far.

I'd like to add that we installed a new garden because we were so inspired by the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, but it was just a happy coincidence!

Story of the World chapters 15-17.

Awesome History: Africa, Egypt, Moses

We read the Anansi story where Anansi finds a village of fried plantains, so we ate fried plantains: yum!

We also finished mummifying our chicken.

We made clay amulets to tuck in the wrappings.  We just let the kids make whatever they liked from sculpey.

 The chicken dried out very well, and even smelled pretty good, thanks to all the spices.

We rubbed it with spiced oil.

This was just oil with whole spices which had been steeping while the chicken was drying out.

 And then it was time to wrap!

I had a set of worn out sheets which we had torn into strips.

Choclo made a little chicken mask, but we had a hard time getting it to stay on.



We ended up making a false head out of extra wrappings, and that seemed to work pretty well!

We also ate matzoh and did an Exodus themed game. 

I wanted the kids to think about how hard it is to have to follow directions when you can't tell where you are going, so we blindfolded Zorg and had the rest of the kids give him directions to fins a hidden stash of candy.

Story of the World chapters 11-14

Awesome History: Assyria, India, China

 We started out with Assyria and the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The kids acted out the story as I read it from the book: Oob was Gilgamesh, the cruel king who learns of love and mortality; Choclo was Enkidu, the wild half-monster who becomes his friend.

I think here Zorg is the Bull of Heaven.

 Then we did sand painting (an Indian art) on the driveway.

We just mixed sand with powdered paint ad let the kids draw whatever they wanted with it.
As it happened, the sand was damp, so the effect was a little different from the last time we did this, but it came out well.

 For China, I really wanted to see if we could get silk from silkworm cocoons.  In the story, the Empress unwinds a cocoon that had fallen into her tea, and, as it turns out, soaking the cocoons in hot water is exactly how you get the silk to unspool!

I should probably note, if you follow the link, that she is growing her own cocoons, mine came from China and already had the pupa removed.

For our snack, we went Indian (Surprise!) with pappadam and chai.

We buy the pappadam at an Indian grocery and fry it in a little oil.  Mmmmm.  Crispy and ethereal deliciousness.

For chai, I simmered some whole spices for half an hour, then took steeped some tea bags in the pot (heat off).  Then I strained it and added milk and sugar (and maybe a touch of vanilla).

The house smelled terrific!  I like to use cinnamon sticks, cloves, star anise (or fennel seeds), peppercorns (or sliced fresh ginger) and green cardamom pods.  I happened to have fenugreek and whole mace (nutmeg arils), so I used them this time.

Story of the World chapters 8-10.

Awesome History: Sumer, Abraham, and Hammurabi

This week covered Sargon the Sumerian (which would make a great pro wrestling name, now that I think of it), the early Israelites (Abraham through Joseph), and Hammurabi.

Hammurabi is known for making laws (the Code of Hammurabi) and posting them around his empire.  This was earliest written legal code we have found, and, in what must have been shocking at the time, Hammurabi declared everyone, even himself, bound by these laws.

Our activity was Hammurabi Says (like Simon Says, but with Hammurabi).

Our art project was writing on clay tablets.  This was just clay slabs with popsicle sticks.  I did use pruners to cut the stick on a slant on one end.

Our snack was making Joseph's coat of many colors out of sugar cookies (cut to look like coats) and multi colored frosting.

It was almost a second art project, really.

Efforts ranged from making it as artistic as possible, to heaping on as much frosting as possible.

I think everyone was pleased with the results!

We also talked about laws at dinner.

When the Zoomlians were all little we read this chapter and set up steles (overturned laundry hampers) around the house with our family's rules (as the kids came up with them).  I called it the Code of ObeyMommy.

Here are some of the rules they came up with:

No breaking any windows.

No singing at the table.

No sleeping in the bath tub.

If you have little kids, I highly encourage you to ask them what they think the laws of your house are!

Story of the World chapters 5-7.