Hideaways in History: The First People

Now don’t go thinking that I went off of the deep end.   I know that Adam and Eve came first.  (Just read that in my Bible . . . plug for B90x).

What we are doing is learning about the development of the world.  Only one week into our Hideaways curriculum and I am already connecting the dots between events in the Bible (that are often left out of the secular textbooks) and the ancient people I studied a long time ago.  Putting the two historical accounts together creates a rich study and provides greater understanding of how God’s handiwork is demonstrated throughout all time.

I appreciate my elementary schooling, but I so wish God’s handiwork would have been included into the historical accounts.  Because the Bible is a fact.  Truth.  It happened.

We are doing things I wouldn’t normally do . . . which is why I chose this particular curriculum.  I’m just not a fun mom.  I don’t build good forts and I lack imagination when it comes to inanimate objects.  I struggle to play cowboys, police officer, or dinosaurs.  But I can do a tea party!

So, the boys got to write on our walls.  (OK, I put paper underneath . . . but it still felt slightly devious.) 

The goal was to create a drawing that portrayed our life. People years from now could learn what the Granola Family was like. 

 

Sir Honey often takes breaks while he is working.

This is Sir Honey’s map and swing set down at the bottom.  (Yea, we have been playing a lot and talking a lot about the swing set we are leaving behind in a few weeks.)

The coolest part of the week, was our actual hideaway.

There were hieroglyphics . . .

and then there were hidden hieroglyphics beneath the box flaps.  Shh!  Don’t tell.

What did they (I) learn?

• The shaduf was one of the first farm machines.  It was a leather bucket  that was attached to one end of a pole while the other end had a weight on it.  The farmer lowered the bucket into the water and then swung the bucket around to pour the water on the crops. 
• One of the earliest cities was Jericho. It had one of the strongest walls in the ancient world . . . I believe I recall a Bible story about Jericho.  🙂 The wall was 10 feet thick and 13 feet tall!
• Until villages and cities developed, it wasn’t unusual for a nomad to have NEVER taken a bath!
• We learned about King Sargon, Mesopotamia, a city called Ur . . . and low and behold Abram lived there. 
• Hammurabi’s Code – the first set of written laws

Pretty cool stuff. 

Next week . . . an igloo.  I started building it last night.  It isn’t pretty.  But it should be novel . . . or unusual . . . or collapse on the kids.