Greek Mythology (2)

I spent some time debating how much detail we wanted to go into Greek mythology at this point in time... I didn't feel the girls would enjoy the violence aspect of the adventures at their current age... And Ancient Greek culture is a good topic base for Art, Geography and History lessons, so I'd rather have the time to plan a unit in enough detail to do it justice rather than do a rushed job now. 😶

With that in mind, I decided to use this week just to focus on the myths we've already covered in the form of another shadow puppet theatre (subtly revising work on light and shadows at the same time!).

The girls chose to do the story of King Midas and the Golden Touch.

Before they could do their play, first I had them rewrite the story in their own words in script format. This sounds a bit daunting for a 6 year old but MashaAllah they managed with some structured help!

After rereading the version in the book and comparing it with a version online (ideally we would go to the library but unfortunately we're without a car atm!), I had the girls tell me what they thought were the main parts to the story. We wrote these on scrap paper so we could then rearrange them into chronological order when they were done (this also helped them see if they had missed any key events out when summarising the story).

I gave the girls a storyboard template so they could translate the bullet point version into a storyboard. This was also useful in getting them to think about what might be on stage at that point during their shadow play.

Next, I had them write out the text in their storyboards on a new piece of paper but adding more detail, paragraphs and direct speech so it flowed like a story - and made them think about what their narrator and characters might say during the play. I had them do this pretty much independently as I wanted them to come up with different versions - a good lesson in how even though we might have the same thing to start with (we all read the same stories), they wrote them again in different ways. Maybe this could be why many different versions of the same story exist? Considering how many thousands of years old the stories are and how many times they must have been retold and passed down!

When they were finished, we recapped editing skills (we had done work that week on conjunctions and fronted adverbials, so they were looking out for those in particular!) and they made changes in a different colour.

(They wrote the words "everything" and "excitedly" at the end as spelling practise since they had misspelt them in their writing. Just chose one for them to do.😗)

Finally, I challenged them to work together on the laptop to turn their stories into one playscript. They needed to think about the layout themselves and talk together to agree on which wording to use! I created them a file on Google Docs for this so I could help with editing on my new laptop (gift from my husband, MashaAllah 😁) - they were amazed how we could all edit the same file at the same time! But it was really convenient so I think from now on we'll continue using Google Docs over Microsoft Word, inshaAllah.

The above was done over three consecutive days.

For their shadow puppets, we talked about how they could show the things turning into gold - how could they make the shadows change colour? I prompted them to think about layering - as we had previously layered blue and yellow cellophane to create a green shadow for grass - which materials could they layer to turn an opaque shadow into yellow?

When they were done and had practised it a few times, we recorded the show (each scene as a separate clip) and edited it on the laptop using Shotcut into one long video.

Greek Mythology (1)

Since the books we have which contain fables also contain Greek myths, I thought it was better to cover them in more detail now since the girls are aware of them anyway... Rather than ignore them and let any seeds of confusion grow! Plus they come up in the Year 3 NC for Literacy.

We began by reminding ourselves who wrote the fables we had been reading - Aesop - and which country he was from - Greece. We talked a little about how he lived a very long long time ago (around 600BC, i.e. 600 years before Prophet Isa (AS) was born - which is what we call year 0 - so over 2,500 years ago!) and how we call that time period "Ancient" Greece.

They found Greece in the atlas (clue: it's in Europe...) and I asked them what they thought the climate was like and why - they said hot, M because their atlas showed olives growing there and F because it was near the equator! I gave them a printed map of Europe (from Google Images) to help familiarise them with it some more. They coloured the water first, following the coastlines and using islands as a starting place to know where the seas were, then coloured the UK followed by Greece and then other countries they had heard of with a key down the side - using their picture atlas to help.

We talked about how in those days, the Ancient Greeks didn't know about Islam. Instead of believing in Allah, they believed in lots and lots of different gods - male and female - who were all in charge of different things... So one was in charge of making things grow, one was in charge of turning night into day, one was in charge of people after they died, etc. etc. And the one in charge of them all was called Zeus. The gods and goddesses all lived together on a mountain called Olympus (the tallest mountain in Greece) where some married each other and had children and some had children with humans so the children were half-gods or demigods... MashaAllah the twins had such precious looks of disbelief on their faces as I was telling them about this! I asked them what we believe and MashaAllah they confidently replied that Allah made everything and is in charge of everything and He does not have children or partners, astaghfirullah!

Then we read through a few myths together (I wrote the word mythology on the board and explained myths is the shorter way of calling them) as examples. We used the Usborne book again, looking for Greek myths in the contents.

We read the story of King Midas followed by the story of Icarus. I asked the girls what fables are for - to teach a moral - and asked them why they thought fables and myths were together in their books... F said because Aesop lived in Ancient Greece so he wanted to write those kinds of stories. M said because they both have a lesson in them. So what were the lessons in these two myths? They came up with to not be greedy for King Midas. For Icarus, they said to listen to what you're told instead of being silly and having too much fun when you're not supposed to. 😂

Then we read the story of Persephone. Towards the end, F started laughing and asked was the story supposed to be explaining why we have winter? When I said yes she laughed more and told me no, we have winter because of the Earth going round the sun. 😜

Finally, we read the story of Pandora's box. F wasn't sure what the lesson was - don't be nosy? - but M understood it as explaining the reason why there are all the bad things in the world.

To finish, I asked them what they thought the features of Greek mythology might be. They came up with teaching a lesson - I clarified this could either be as a moral or explaining something about the world - and having Greek gods/goddesses as characters. They also said Greek myths didn't have to be as short and simple as fables were.

Throughout the rest of the week we watched episodes from Super Wings which were set in Europe, since the series was streaming on Amazon Prime at the time.