The Spartans!

I have been so excited this past week because of  today's lesson in history that I could hardly wait to start the week.
I have been fascinated by Greece and the Greeks for a LONG time, and so the past few weeks have been lots of fun to cover.
Last week we talked about the Greek legend regarding Cadmus( though he was Phoenician), and the alphabets beginnings. The week before, Paris, son of Priam, and the Trojan war. We discussed the Iliad and the Odyssey- briefly.

Today we learned about the Spartans!

Now before I taught the lesson I thought it would be a good idea to brush up on my knowledge of the Spartans, and that led me to a very interesting show. "Ancient Worlds: The Spartans." It is two and a half hours long, which seems like forever, but it really is VERY interesting. Just a warning, this is NOT a movie for children. There are a few parts, some right at the beginning that would not be appropriate for little ones.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auLhL-6dk4Q

So, on with our day.

We began our day with a Bible lesson from 1 Corinthians 9:24-27. The title of the Lesson was " Running the Race" and it compared the training of a marathon runner to that of the life of a Christian and their faith. Because the Spartans were so focused on being warriors/ physical strength, I thought that this was an appropriate lesson for our day .
It is broken down into 5 lessons which we will be continuing throughout the week.
You can find it here:
http://children.cccm.com/NTDevotionsPDF/DEVNT318.pdf

We then went for our morning walk and the KIDS decided that the cul-de-sac would make a great race track- wink, wink....

The dog decided to join in when he saw the kids running! So funny!

When we went back in, we began our history lesson on the Spartans. We discussed how the Spartans only wanted physically perfect people in their city- including babies. We discussed how boys were taken from their families at age 7, and how they were encouraged to lie, cheat, etc. but never to get caught. We talked about the bad food, the minimal clothing- one cloak a year, and the training they went through including being beaten up to toughen them up even when they had not done anything wrong. The kids were very interested in these" Spartans"!

From there we looked at a map and located Sparta. We compared and contrasted the Spartans to the Athenians who were very different. We read of wedding customs and way of life.While everyone agreed that the Spartans were super cool, they also agreed that they would much rather have been Athenian than Spartan if they were living in those days. 

I found a neat website that humorously portrayed how the Spartans and Athenians would have viewed the Olympics.

Found here:  http://greece.mrdonn.org/olympics.html#SPARTA

I also found a fun interactive online here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/ancient_greeks/the_olympic_games/

scroll to the activities section and select " Visit the ancient games"

So then it was time to have a little competition of our own.

Testing the air

Javelin Throwing

Add caption

Discus throwing

The picture wasn't that great but it is funny because I am hiding behind a row of corn so I don't get hit !

The kids also worked on spelling on a site called "Spelling City"   http://www.spellingcity.com/

And Typing/ Keyboarding

You can find a fun site here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/

And math, but alas there are no pictures.

We finished our afternoon in the garden where we were blessed by these........

And this.....well, this is what happens when you have a runt carrot and a funny daddy..... carrot people

We are going to use our garden goodies in a tomato bisque tonight for dinner and then wrap up our day by sitting down for a family movie. The 1962 version of  The 300 Spartans!

We had a lot of fun, and I hope you enjoyed reading along. Hope you join us again!