Mateer Blog and Carpet Emporium: Adventures in Greece

For the past 3 weeks, the kids and I have been studying ancient Greece. It has been fascinating. I think (once again) I am learning as much as they are!

First we learned about Democracy in Greece and how it is similar and different from the democracy that we have here in America. We also learned about the Trojan horse and the kids and I built a Trojan Horse out of cardboard. (We used Anna's grocery cart for the body so it could even "roll" into Troy. hahaha)

All three of the children helped to build the Trojan Horse.
Tim is holding a "torch" that the men of Greece used to signal their man in the city of Troy.

Then we studied the importance of the theater in ancient Greece and Josh and Sarah did a whole play out of their Lego minifigures. They actually did the play about The Trojan Horse as well. I will try to post the little video later!

Then, the final week that we were studying Greece, we learned about the Olympics. We made shirts the first day of that week that looked like the Olympic Flag. This was such a great craft because all the kids were able to do it! I saved jars and we used the top of the jars for the circles that you see on the flag. Then we did one color at a time, dipped the jar into the fabric paint (poured out in a circle on a paper plate) and then "printed" it onto the shirt to make the first color of the circles on the flag. We just dipped the jar, printed it on the shirt and then passed it to the next person. First we did blue, then yellow, then black, then green, and finally red.

We also learned about the history of the flag and the history of the Olympics. There are quite a few differences between the original Olympics and the current Olympics! The last day of that week, we did our own Olympics and even made our own gold medals! It was a fun, educational time!