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The ancient Greek foot soldiers were called hoplites. Thisword comes from “hoplon,” the shield each had to carry.Each hoplite provided his own armor. The shield was madeof bronze and leather. Each hoplite could choose thedecoration on his shield and often used a symbol ofhis family or city. The shield was very important, so much so that in Spartait was against the law for a hoplite to leave his shieldbehind in...
I gathered a number of items from around the houseand put them all into a ziploc bag with a flashlight. Thenbefore letting the kids sort, I made sure they saw examplesand understood the difference between something thatwas transparent: you can see obects clearly through and light passes throughtranslucent: you cannot clearly see objects, but light passes throughopaque: light does not pass through I was surprised by a number of objects...
This activity would be easy to create by clippingfood items from an advertisement. I got mine on saleat some point. There’s also a free file folder game athttp://filefolderfun.com/FirstGradeHealth.htmlwhere kids can sort items into grains, fruit, vegies,milk and meat. Anyway, here is DD sorting foods into the variousfood groups. PS — When I was talking to my hubby about the“food pyramid” he said, “Oh no, that’s outdated.” HappilyI could say that...
For this activity we needed cooked spaghetti (we usedfettuccine), bits of yarn or string and glue. We had onebowl of plain glue, and a bowl of glue + red food coloringanother with glue/yellow and another with glue/green. This activity worked best when I had them use a fork.My kids didn’t dip it in well enough to get a lot of glue.They really needed to stir it around a bit (and...
ED turns two next week! Wow! She continues to do many of the same tonging,spooning and sorting activities with ever moreconcentration. I love this picture below whereshe is just so intent on getting the eraser ontothe right spot! I usually set up one new activity for her on thelittle table in the kitchen each morning. I didn’tget a picture of the rice/bean tub in action, butput in a picture of...
This tub used to be considerably fuller, but over timelots of the rice/beans have been tossed! This is a sensoryactivity. ED (and the others!) have to feel through therice/beans for the hidden objects.
The workbox yahoo group I participate in had a great discussion last week about “fun” boxes. I wrote my own comments and thought I’d share them here too: I’m a little late adding to the discussion, but I really enjoyed reading everyone’s comments and thoughts about fun boxes. I always enjoy hearing how things are working for others. I think I’m different from many in that my kids do their...
I have lots of science experiments that we didn’tget to this past month. Since we’re going on toother units, I didn’t want to do science experimentsdaily. Instead, I have decided to set up a new sciencecenter every Monday. That gives me time over theweekend to gather the materials I need and to getthings set up. On Thursdays, I plan to set up an “old” experimentthat we’ve done already out on...
Part III: Float a Penny Test how many pennies can be placed on an index cardbefore it sinks. Do the same with a popsicle stick. See how many rocks/pennies can be placed on a pieceof bark before it sinks or tips over. Part IV: Float AND SinkTry to make the following items float. Then try to makethat same object sink. Do not place anything on it. Try: aluminium foilclaya plastic...
When we looked at the geography of Greece last week we had talked about the importance of boats both for trade, transportation and as warships. Our science center led naturally to the construction of their own “Greek” boats. We looked at a couple of books we have, brought out LD’s saw, glue, tape and off they went! We tested their boats in our pool afterwards. Related Posts you May Be Interested In: Ancient Greece Geography...
I think I mentioned last week that we started a new unit on Ancient Greece. (We studied Ancient Egypt last semester.) We’ve been quite busy reading and crafting and LD seems to be having a lot of fun with this unit! LD and I worked together to on this wonderful Parthenon craft that we found at http://www.stormthecastle.com/paper-castle/paper-parthenon.htm. All we needed was a printer, scissors, glue, tape and a cereal box! We visited this Art History...
We learned about the ancient Greek olympicsand talked about the modern Olympics. Wewatched a video of the 2004 Olympics inAthens and LD made an olympic victorywreath. Of course the 2010 winter Olympics beginFeb. 12 and we will do some activities totie into that. Activity Village has some activitiesand website links about the Vancouver olympics.Here are a couple other resources that I mightcheck out in more detail about the winter Olympicssoon:...
We read a wonderful book about the Ancienct Greek gods and goddesses of Olympus by Aliki. The book had very visual pictures that went along well with the short myths about each god or goddess. It captured LD’s imagination and he really learned a lot from its simple retelling. We read through the entire book and LD has asked me to re-read sections again. We also read the myth of...
Today the entire family sat down to make scary Medusa masks. LD was the only one who had the patience to glue his snakes onto the top piece. DD said to put it into her workbox for later and spent the next hour playing with the three masks she had made.
