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…
This just isn’t going to work for us.
It took less than a week for me to realize that the history program we have all laid out for us is not going to work. I do believe the kids would have fun with the activity guide (like these cave paintings) and the hideaways but the content is too abstract. Sure we could work our way through it but instead I’m going to shelf it for awhile and come back to it in a few years when I feel everyone will get more out of it.
So now I’m back to pulling together my own curriculum. After talking with Bug I’ve come up with a new plan… History of Heroes. We are going to focus on biographies… people the kids should know. We will be starting with inventors. Those of you who enjoyed my lessons plans from last year, stay tuned. I will have my first semester list up shortly.
