Just like Indiana Jones

We finished our first week of school.  We only did three days, but we had some ups and downs already.  I figure this will always be a learning processes.  I embrace the fact that I will have to change things as we go along.  At least the kids are excited and enjoying this change so far.

We are doing history all together.  We are getting our lessons and crafts from a series called The Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer.  It's simple enough for my three older kids to follow and it comes with an activity book filled with fun ideas for hands-on learning.

This week, we just did the introduction.  We learned about what history is, what historians do, what archaeology is, and what archaeologists do.  For our activity, we had an archaeological dig in the back yard.  I had the kids get their clipboards, paper, and pencils and bring them out back where there magically had appeared a dig site.  First they roped off the area into a grid with official rainbow yarn and popsicle sticks.  I also asked them to pretend it was 500 years in the future.  Since I buried our own stuff, I needed them to pretend they didn't know what the things were that they were finding.  The idea was that they try to learn about ancient people based on the materials and uses of the items they found.

They all had fun participating in different ways.  Eli was happy to suspend disbelief for a little bit and examine the artifacts, writing on the paper where he discovered them.  Noah was so excited to just find things and thought it was funny when he found Legos and a Scooby-Doo plate.  When Leah found stuff, she would put her hand on her hip and say, "Really, Mom?"  I think she was expecting to find actual ancient artifacts.  Naomi loved flinging the dirt.  Her favorite artifact was the toothbrush, which she did put in her mouth.  Don't be too grossed out.  It was mine, so it's only been in my mouth and a bunch of dirt; that's all.