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.

Fables

Continuing the theme from their shadow puppet theatre, and referring to the NC for Year 3, I decided to move on to looking at fables in more detail as our next Literacy topic.

We read examples from some of the books in this collection (I bought a few many years ago for £1 each from The Works!) and I left the others in their book box for this term for them to explore at their leisure.

We talked briefly about who Aesop was - where and when he was from - but I plan to go through this in more detail in the coming weeks as we move on to look at Greek mythology InshaAllah.

Another day, we read through some more examples of fables and I left several books open as visual reminders. We discussed what they all had in common - i.e. how do we know they're fables? What features do they have?

As the girls came up with ideas, and I prompted for others, we came up with a list of features:

- Short and simple
- Only a few characters, usually 2
- Often animal characters
- One learns a lesson
- The characters are in the title
- Contains direct speech
- Contains time connectives
- Contains connectives to show cause and effect
- The moral is written at the end

The following day, I printed out the following sheet as a template for the girls to have a go at planning and writing their own short fable.

You can download the worksheet here.

Because we had just covered Al-Mutakabbir as one of Allah's names, I gave the girls the moral "Don't be arrogant".

We discussed ideas together as a group and they each came up with their own plot. They wrote their first draft, listened to each other's to give constructive criticism, edited their work then wrote up their final drafts below: