Another project we completed while studing Ancient Rome was making relief sculptures. We looked at relief images found on Rome Arches. Afterwards the kids made their own relief images. Using modeling clay, the kids made animal reliefs by rolling out a flat piece of clay, scratching an image into the clay and then pushing the background down to make the image pop. Fairy’s made a mouse, Bug a dragon and Pixie had me help her make a bear. The kids want to paint their reliefs… we just have not had a chance to do that yet.
Bug decided that he really wanted to make a Roman Gladiator Shield. I cut out cardboard rectangles for the kids. They then looked at images of roman shields and painted their shields. After the shields dried, we taped handle straps to the back of of the shields. Bug’s turned out awesome.
Here are a few of Bug’s Journal Pages on Ancient Egypt. I keep finding more and more drawings like these all over the house. In some he has devised elaborate pyramid tomb raider defenses… mazes of hallways, trap doors, hidden monsters (scorpions and such), fake rooms, etc. He has definitely embraced ancient history.
It has been awhile since I’ve tried to tie a Toga… (like since Senior Year Band Camp). It all came back to me though ;). Here are the kiddos doing a little history dress up.
While watching a documentary on Ancient Greece the kids became enthralled with the pottery and asked "Can we do that?" As it just so happens I had a 5lb block of self hardening clay that I ordered recently with a bunch of other art supplies. It was meant for something else but heck… we can make Greek Pottery today and I will just have to order more for later.
They were surprised that it was much harder that it looked. Clay is a very different creature than play-dough or salt dough. BTW – it took about 48 hours to dry enough to paint. We used both orange and black paint because the kids wanted theirs to look like the greek pottery in the show which was made with a red clay.
Pixie, who loves play-dough, enjoyed the different texture.
Fairy painted a picture of Athena on her cup.
Bug really wanted his to look like a vase and spent a lot of time shaping his.
Long time, no post. We had a wonderful Christmas and lovely break. We’re back in the swing of things school-wise now and have revisited some of the curriculum that wasn’t working back in August. The kids are loving it now and we are looking forward to a lot of fun with ancient history this winter.
Some stuff we’ve been working on lately…
In Science we have been talking about the water cycle. We have completed a couple labs…
States of Water
Recycling water through evaporation
In History we have been learning about the Ancient Egyptians.
Cardboard Pyramids
Toliet Paper Wrapped Doll Mummies
Lego Pyramid
Peg Dolls Pharaoh & Mummy (for more details check them out on Wee Folk Art shortly)
In art we have completed a few projects from Artistic Pursuits Book 1.
Artists Use Their Imaginations – Water color penicls
Books we are reading…
The Wright Brothers’ Bicycle Shop
The Wright Brothers’ Home
Full Scale Model of the Flyer
While working on our Wright Brothers project earlier this fall we did a lot of fun activities out of the book Planes, Gliders, Helicopters and Other Flying Machines. One that the kids enjoyed was the Hot Air Balloon experiment we did when we were talking about lighter than air flying.
What you need… small plastic bottle, balloon, heat safe bowl and a kettle/pot. Stretch the balloon over the opening of the empty bottle. Note how it hangs down. Talk about what is in the bottle. This isn’t necessarily apparent to young kids. Even an empty bottle has air in it. Predict what will happen when the air gets hot. Heat water. Test your prediction by placing the bottle in a heat safe bowl filled with hot water (mom should do this for safety reasons). You will have to hold the bottle down… empty bottles like to float… but that is another experiment ;). Watch as the balloon inflates. Talk about why and then predict what will happen when you place it in the freezer.
We ended up going back and forth from hot to cold several times as the kids were fascinated with this experiment. We did this experiment a couple weeks ago but I didn’t get a chance to blog about it so we are using it as our entry for the Unplugged Challenge Theme B.
Hehe, doesn’t everyone do school in Hogwarts robes?
Bug came up to me about a week ago, while I was in the middle of something else, with a little plastic plane in his hand and a sheet of paper… "Mom can you help me make it have that big flat piece so it will fly?"
HUH? "How do you want me to get the paper on… can you draw me a picture?" We have taken to making the boy draw diagrams of what he wants since he has very speficic ideas of how he wants something done (and tends to whine if it isn’t done to his satisfaction).
"Like this Mom."
Ahhh… I could now tell that he didn’t have a wing modification in mind… what he really wanted was a parachute.
"Hmmm…. I don’t think this paper is really going to work for a parachute." Silly, busy mom… I went back to what I was doing. I wish I could say I jump on every one of these projects… but sometimes laundry does need to get folded ya know.
It didn’t matter… he came back a few minutes later holding a plastic bag and a some thread.
"Ok Buddy… let’s see if this works."
Fairy was immediately in on the project too. We’ve made several of these little parachutes now and have tried different objects tied to the end. The little plastic cowboys the kids get as rewards from Tae Kwon Do have been deemed the best. But it was good for them to try the heavier stuff too.
Here is a quick run down if you would like to make one. What you need is a plastic shopping bag (although we have all those reusable bags we still seem to end up with a handful of these in the house), thread, tape and a light weight toy.
Cut the plastic bag into a 20" or so square.
Cut out 4 pieces of thread about 18" long. Using a small piece of tape, attach a thread to each corner.
Pull all the threads together in the center and tie your toy to the end.
After learning about the Wright Brothers’ Bicycle shop, we spent some time taking a long hard look at what goes into a bicycle. The kids noticed the obvious things first, wheels, seat, handle bars but after a while they got more detailed pointing out the petals, chains, gears, etc. We talked about what powers a bicycle and how the wheels turn. We talked about how you control the bike (direction, brakes) and why that was important. We also talked about the materials used to make a bicycle. The kids required little to no prompting on these observations. Bug was truly fascinated with the mechanics.