Dining with Royalty

We are currently reading one of the My Royal series, "Mary Queen of Scots". It is Mary's "supposed" diary from when she was aged 11 and living in France with the King, his family, and her Scottish BFF's (I am hip with the lingo peeps) who lived with her, the four Mary's. This book relates to our history program, Story of the World (Volume Three, Chptr 2), and simply expands a bit of information on Mary as a girl and gives the children a picture of how she may have lived during that time.

 

Both girls are really enjoying the diary and press me daily for another read. They are quite capable of reading it by themselves but for some reason they still really love it when I read to them. The good thing about reading these books out loud is that we can discuss certain situations, scenes and meanings so there is no misinterpretation of them. 

 

 

 

The book has affected them more than I realised. This is what I walked past in the school room late this afternoon. Milo, crackers, dips and brie and they even had Mozart playing in the background. Afternoon tea between the Queen of France and Queen of Spain apparently!

 

Ancient Greece

We've been covering a fair bit of ancient Greece in our Story of the World history book recently. Mostly it's been about waring. Now between us wars don't really appeal to my two girly girls so I have been making sure to add some activities that I think will keep them better interested.

Recently after their book work, I had the girls make Greek chitons.

They machine sewed a simple piece of cotton material together and turned it so the seam was on the inside. They place the seam at the back and then sewed a couple of buttons onto their chitons on the shoulders. Can I cross credit that with home economics too ... yeah, why not.

 

Here's Agent Smelly in hers ... the waist tie are those tie backs from our drapes ... hehe

 

 

Here's the Fashionista in hers. We didn't have enough material to make them wider, thus fuller which would have been more realistic. It was simply material I found in my scrap box ... had I been more organised (famous last words) I could have bought some to use.

 

I had to include this ... check out Agent Smelly's tartan socks ... it was cold!

 

 

The girls decided that they had put so much work into them that they had to wear them for the remainder of the day!  This is what the Papa walked in on that night ... two Greek Goddesses playing a board game.

These have now gone into the dress-up box ... and I am sure will be pulled out again and again. They were pretty chuffed with them.

The Early Greeks

Chapter 19 - The Early Greeks, Story of the World

After reading our chapter in the Story of the World, we put together a very basic lap book piece on the Mycenaeans and the Barbarians.

We then watch a part of some documentary on You Tube which made the girls threaten to kill themselves if they had to watch anymore of. I looked at a couple of others and they were all VERY dry and didn't appeal to the girls at all. So sorry no recommendations.

I was racking my brain to think of something that would appeal to them that coincided with the early Greeks so I prepared a meal like I thought the Greeks might eat. Dried fruit, gherkins, olives, cheese with some wine (OK it was simply blackcurrant and cranberry syrup with some sparkling water) served in wine glasses. Whilst they finished their book work I dragged one of the sofa's over to the other and set up the table. The girls were stoked!

 

 

 

Should I be worried that the first thing they tried was the "wine" ... I think they take after their Papa!

Whilst the "patriots" ate the Mama read the book, "I Wonder Why Greeks Built Temples" that I picked up at the library as one of their sale items for 50 cents. It covered lots of different areas but they were especially surprised (or should that read horrified) to hear that Greek brides were only 13 or 14 when they got married to their husbands who were 30 years or more. Agent Smelly then told her sister she only had a couple of years to go and started to try and marry off her sister, much to her sister's abject horror!

The Fashionista was impressed with Greek's democratic process and we spent some time discussing how it works (or doesn't) these days.

Really getting into the spirit of things!

At one stage they called the "slave girl", (namely me - so what's new!) for some more wine and Agent Smelly said "thank you". The Fashionista then asked whether they would have said "thank you" to their slaves. After some discussion (and giggles) the consensus was "probably not".

The Greeks ate a lot of olives ... apparently the Greeks can keep their stuffed green olives!

Both girls enjoyed the lesson immensely, which for some reason always seem to be the case when food is involved!

Life in Early Crete

Chapter 18 - Life in Early Crete, Story of The World

Today we read chapter 18 which was about the Minoans and included the story "King Minos and the Minotaur". The Fashionista commented that she was pretty glad that she didn't live back then as she is pretty flexible and "bouncy" so fears she would have been one of those children that were made to be trained as bull jumpers. The one's that didn't live past 20 years old.

The girls put together a paper maze for their history journal and then we listened to this song on You Tube by History Teachers, as Agent Smelly responds particularly well to music. It was a great little song, words set to the Radiohead song Creep. I suggest, unless you don't mind that sort of thing, that if your children ask to hear the original song, you say you can't find it as I had forgotten it has a rather strong expletive in it ... more than once. I confess I did find it rather amusing to see both of their little mouths drop open as they looked enquiringly at me, when they heard it. The Fashionista said "did he just say a bad word?" and I had to say "er yes". Needless to say we only listened to it once and headed back to the history version. Last thing I needed was for those original lyrics to stick in their heads! The Papa had a chuckle when I told him later and apparently if the girls turn out with foul mouths then I am now to blame. Details for his funeral service will be posted later!

We also watched some you tube documentaries which were a little dry and basically similar to what we had read in our history book.

The girls made some Lego mazes (as I was a tad unprepared today) like the mazes in the Minotaur fable and that was about it.

Walk Like an Egyptian

This week we covered The New Kingdom of Egypt (Chapter 13 - Story of the World Book 1) in our history session.

We read about a couple of lesser know Pharaohs, well one was actually a woman named Hatshepsut. The girls were pretty impressed with her declaring that she was staying on the throne, even though it was unheard of for a woman to rule in those days. She told the people to think of her as a man, dressed like one and even wore a beard when she was on the throne. Hatshepsut you rock! The girls were horrified to learn that the only positions available to women back then was as a wife/mother, a dancer or working in the temple. They understand that there is nothing wrong with those occupations but they didn't like that the women didn't have a choice.

They added a lapbooking piece to their history notebooks, courtesy of The Chronicle of the Earth blog.

We also read online that apparently all Egyptians wore makeup, and that included children. Black kohl which was used to outline the eyes as it wasn’t only makeup; it protected the eyes from the blinding Egyptian sunlight. Green and blue eyeshadow, along with red lipstick and blush was worn for special occasions by the ladies. So of course ...

 

 

 

Yes, I even logged onto YouTube and played them "Walk Like an Egyptian" by the Bangles. Again a pretty impressive "female" band ... there seemed to be a theme, but I assure you it was by accident.

 

And then cause I am just weird like that, I had them pretend they were mummies ... took AGES for The Fashionista to stop giggling for me to get a shot! Agent Smelly is such a good little actress and can immediately get into the mood for any shot.

If I had of been more prepared, cause we decided to dress up at the last minute, I would have had some of those big necklaces printed out for them to decorate and wear but instead we just settled for some of my old chunky gold jewellery that now lives in the dress up box.

In case you are wondering, yes our dress up box is HUGE! Forget spending a load of money that children outgrow, invest in lots of dress ups, doesn't have to be expensive, we have material, second-hand clothing, you name it in ours. When friends visit the kids always end up dressing up. 


Some links in case anyone wants them:
Egyptian headband
http://www.firstpalette.com/tool_box/printables/egyptheadband.html

Pharoah Headdress
http://www.firstpalette.com/Craft_themes/Wearables/pharaohheaddress/pharaohheaddress.html

Hieroglyphs and Cuneiform

Chapter 3 - The First Writing, Story of The World

Today we read chapter 3 which was a short chapter on the earliest people to use writings, i.e. the Egyptians and Sumerians.

The girls then cut out the relevant lapbooking piece from The Chronicles of the Earth blog.
They had to write something in both hieroglyphs and cuneiform into a little fold over matchbook.

I printed out the heiroglyph alphabet from here Heiroglyph Chart and each girl then wrote something for the other person to decipher into their lapbook insert. I hadn't set out for them to do that but they started to try and guess what each other was writing which turned into a bit of fun.

Then we logged onto Penn Museum's site where they could type in their name and see their monogram in cuneiform. It does say that it is Babylonian cuneiform and we were studying Mesopotamia, so am not sure how close this cuneiform (funnily enough it just doesn't happen to be an area of my expertise) is to being the right one for us but never the less we used it. The girls then copied their initials onto their lapbook insert. They loved this so much that they sat typing carious members of the family into it to work out who had the longest and hardest name to write.

Lastly I set them up outside (in the wind, hence the hoody!) to avoid a mess of clay everywhere, to carve some more hieroglyphs into clay.

They quite enjoyed this. The Fashionista told me that she has written the letter "L" in hieroglyphs so often, that she now knows it by heart. Of course both girls ended up writing about their GOATS!


As always anything to do with Egypt is such fun. Why wasn't history more fun when I was a girl? It was all about facts and dates which I could never remember or probably wanted to!