Homeschooling UP (as opposed to a down)

Homeschooling definitely has its ups and downs, but there are moments when it all seems worth it. For me, these moments usually come when the kids take something we’ve talked about and expand it on their own. This week was one of those times.

We studied Alexander the Great in history and for our Thursday history meeting the youngest 3 kids wanted to put on a play about Alexander’s life. The Net was the director and writer. Several times during the week he came to me frustrated that Deep Thinker and Rosa weren’t cooperating. Hmmm! Imagine that!

The final production had a scene with Alexander’s father finding a snake in his bed (apparently Alexander’s mom, Olympia, was fond of snakes and even kept them in her bed. Yikes!). It also had a re-enactment of a battle where the enemy had elephants (they built their own elephant out of packing boxes) and then collapsed on the ground, having been trampled by the box elephant. Mid-scene Deep Thinker looked at the net and said, “The elephant has NO EARS!” He could hardly continue for worrying about the poor, ear-less elephant, while The Net was totally in the-show-must-go-on-mode and would not be distracted by such a trivial matter.

The Roman soldier...I looked out the kitchen window the other day and saw that my house was being guarded by Roman soldiers. Every few minutes the guard would change and a new soldier would come on duty. 

Trampled by an elephant...

King Philip of Macedonia discovers there's a snake in his bed!

Alexander riding Bucephalus

Battle!

 During the scene changes, they’d have us close our eyes and during an especially long scene change Rosa said, “Sorry guys. This is going to take 3 whiles.” It made me laugh; as did her narrations about the actions of the queen if she didn’t feel The Net was giving her character enough attention. “Doesn’t the queen’s dress look poofy?” and “The queen is just sitting here,” both caught me as funny. There were several court scenes with the queen (who was mostly concerned about whether her dress was fluffy and whether we all thought she was beautiful…and posing for the camera, of course!).

The Queen -- looking regal in her very poofy dress.

And at one point Alexander had about 5 crowns stacked on top of his original crown (why not a quintuple crown?) The Net had several places where he’d built in funny things like the crown falling over his eyes and his funny face as he tried to stack the 5^th crown on his head. He’s often so quiet, but put him in front of an audience, and he’s a ham!

Our favorite, though, was when they put on metallic blue wigs and started dancing around the room all crazy… “This is what the germs were doing in Alexander’s body after he died!” was the title given to this segment. It definitely took me by surprise! Then after the germ party, they showed what the people saw from the outside (a “body” covered with big sheets of paper that was supposed to be sand). There was also a lot of loud mourning for the dead Alexander by his soldiers.

Germ frenzy!

Another product of our studies lately has been Rosa’s new identity. She plays Aphrodite every night in the bathtub. Since Aphrodite was supposedly born from the sea foam (I won’t go into further detail) and is usually in the nude, I suppose it’s appropriate. Outside the tub and dressed, Aphrodite gives a lot of hugs and expects everyone to say how lovely she is. Crazy enough -- I’ve actually seen “The Birth of Venus” by Botticelli that was painted in 1485. It shows Aphrodite arriving at the shore, standing on a giant clam shell in the ocean. It’s located in the Uffizi in Florence! In case any of you want to see it, it’s just a short train ride from our house!