Chichen Itza

On our last full day in Mexico, we traveled by bus to Chichen Itza...
(the kids in front of "El Castillo")

I have to say that it was amazing to see. You truly are just in awe of this civilization that established this city around 1,000 years ago.

Here is a shot of one of the hoops from the ball court...
another part of the ball court....
In the information about the ball court that I linked to above, it mentions how sound travels through the court. Our tour group tried it.... and it works. Simply amazing.

Here's Alex in front of something (perhaps a time where a shallow depth of field was not a good idea :-) ....
The observatory....
(the information above references that you can go into most of the ruins.... this is no longer true)

The nunnery...
Aren't the carvings amazing?

The backside of the ball court....
The temple of the warriors (back) and the snake on El Castillo (front right)....
The top of El Castillo....
El Castillo was pretty amazing itself. Did you know that it has exactly 365 steps? 91 on each side and one more into the doorway at the top.

Also.... if you clap in front of the pyramid...

the echo comes back as a birdlike noise. Alex was obsessed with this and tried it a bunch of times.

The place was absolutely incredible. I just wish that we hadn't been so hot and tired so we could have seen more of it. Perhaps being back here in Chicago has turned me into a heat wimp! :-)

Oh... before we left for the trip I had checked out a bunch of books about the Mayas from the library. I had intended to read them together for school.... but we ran out of time. Alex ended up reading most of them himself at bedtime so he was well prepped for the trip. Also, we were on the upgraded tour so our bus had tv screens.... on the way to the site they showed us a National Geographic special about the Mayas which was great.... it wasn't specifically about Chichen Itza but it had lots of good background information. Alex used his spending money to purchase a book about the Mayas and read it cover to cover in a couple of days. It was a comic book style book.... I'll have to look through it myself.

a couple of egypt dvds

We have watched a couple DVDs on Ancient Egypt lately. We got both of them from Netflix.

The first one we watched was...

Pyramid

This one was based on the book by the same name by David Macaulay. We had checked out the book from the library as well.

Alex really liked this movie. I was a little let down, but I think it was because I was expecting something different. I think we'll continue to get the movies from this series as we work our way through Story of the World.

The second one we watched was this one...

The History Channel Presents Egypt - Engineering an Empire

I thought this one was amazing. Alex and Clara both got into it... Alex especially. There was a lot about the "hows" and "whys" of the ancient Egyptian structures. It was amazing to see just how some of the things were constructed.

My only word of caution is that during the section on Queen Hatshepsut they document the queen's relationship with Senenmut by showing ancient lewd graffiti that had been found... they do blur out the worst parts.... but it was a subject I wasn't expecting to see in this program.

Anyway... I finally remembered to mail in our Netflix movies, so by the end of the week we'll have one more Egypt DVD to watch.

mummies

Yesterday was SO MUCH FUN!!! I love it when a project becomes something that we're really into instead of "just school".... if you know what I mean. The kids were into this project anyway... but given that they had been reading some ancient Egypt books on their own, they had their own ideas on how we should do things.

The Story of the World activity book has you mummifying a chicken... I just couldn't do that... it just icks me out just thinking about it. So I went searching around the web looking for alternatives. I found these instructions on the Tweaked Academy blog. They were just what I was looking for!

In the meantime... the kids had been reading these two books....

You Wouldn't Want to Be an Egyptian Mummy!

Ancient Egyptians (History Dudes)
(thanks for letting us borrow this Jennifer, Alex loves it!)

... and had some ideas of their own.

Namely, the addition of Anubis...

Or the priest who acted as the chief embalmer who wore the mask of Anubis (god of embalming). I didn't know about this because I was so focused on the actual embalming that I didn't pay much attention to the ritual of embalming. The kids rushed down to Alex's room to make him an Anubis mask which we then taped to his ski mask.

The chief embalmer marks the line on the left side of the bodies for the "slicer" to cut along...
Here is a shot of our dearly departed royal family and the elements needed for their proper burial...
I got to be the "slicer".... which had the added bonus of being chased from the room and having "stones" thrown at you by the other embalmers since "his bloody work insults the gods". I had them make paper stones so I got to run from kitchen (I did put the knife down first) while being pelted with paper wads! Good times! Honestly... the kids LOVED it!

Here they are removing the "organs"...
and anointing the bodies with wine (rubbing alcohol and red food coloring in a Dr. Pepper bottle...lol... how's that for fancy?)....
The little packets above are the "organs", we're embalming them too.

Then we mixed up our "natron"... and started covering the bodies...
I think I ended up using three and a half boxes of baking soda and two and a half canisters of salt. I just mixed it up in equal proportions until the bodies were covered. I have some extra so I can replace the natron when needed.

Oh... and last night the kids used the hieroglyph stamps from their kit to make name labels for the mummies. On Monday we had watched a special about the Screaming Man on the National Geographic Channel and they kept stressing how important it was for mummies to be buried with their names.... a nameless mummy could not get into the afterlife. So, they had to have names... however, for now they are mom, dad and Tut. :-)

So... that was our day yesterday! Hopefully today will be as fun but without the mess! lol!

a morning with Ben Franklin

A couple of months ago, Alex read this book (it's part of Ambleside Online's Year 1)...

Benjamin Franklin

So, when I saw Historical Perspectives for Children presents Ben Franklin show up the Old Town School's field trip list... I knew we had to go.

I thought Alex would find it interesting but I wasn't sure how engaged Clara would be.  Well... I have to say that we were all three glued to the action on the stage.  The presentation was so well done!  The actor who played Ben Franklin never left the stage but went through several costume changes chronicling Ben Franklin's life from a child to his old age.

Here he is as a child learning a lesson about being wise with your money after paying too much for a tin whistle...

As a youth, working with his father making candles...
And as an old man...
There were several other stages that I didn't get good photographs of as well.  It was a good, educational show with a very good message.  It really, truly made history come alive for all of us!

I'm so glad we went (we almost didn't with all that we have going on this weekend)!  We will definitely plan on going if we ever see Historical Perspectives for Children show up on the field trip list again!