Family tree and history

I was in search of videos on the Aztecs when I came across Legacy, a BBC television series about the great ancient civilizations hosted by Michael Wood. Bingo. Of course, it wasn't only about the Aztecs, and of course we wanted to see the whole thing, and thus in about fifty minutes the entire course of our current study changed. It was silly of me to think that starting at the very beginning of time in order to learn about American and United States history wouldn't also require learning about world history along the way, so we will be continuing from the nomadic hunter time period, about twenty thousand years after human migration into America, but instead of looking only at the nations of the Americas we will be looking everywhere. Simultaneous, holistic history. Plus there really is nothing more fascinating than ancient civilizations and the stories, myths, and inventions that came from them.

Looking at some of the resources I happened to have on hand, most recommended that we first learn about archeology and the study of history. Of course we've already been doing that, and Calvin's pretty comfortable with the concept of archeology, but we hadn't really talked yet about the fallibility of history, so we started today with the family tree. How does making a family highlight the fallible nature of history? Inadvertantly so. This was actually a really cool project that kind of grew and shaped itself over the day.

Calvin was all about making the tree. I figured we'd just cut some construction paper and glue together a tree starting with him and ending with his grandparents, but as he was gluing together said tree I was practicing the piano, and before I knew it the tree had grown to include five generations. We sat down and started naming the different people on the tree, but I couldn't go past Jon's grandparents on his side, and it became clear that a phone call would be necessary to finish the project. Calvin wanted to make the call himself, so we worked together to create interview sheets for each of the grandparents, and he used those to make the calls and get the information he needed. See how things take on a shape of their own?

And here's where it got especially interesting. My parents answered the interview questions from memory (because I'm the keeper of my family's genealogical records, but thought the phone call would be fun anyhow), while Jon's parents answered the questions from a written record they had on hand. Comparing Calvin's sheets following the phone interviews (my parent's was missing information) made clear the limitations of an oral tradition—sharing information kept in memory only—and we talked about the fallibility of information passed on from before the advent of common writing. In addition, after the phone interviews I pulled out my boxes of genealogy and unearthed birth and marriage certificates that we used to fill in the blanks on my parent's sheets, and to correct any information that had been related or recorded incorrectly—another point of comparison. It was a fascinating step in the project, and we spent an extra hour exploring the historic documents—both official, like certificates, and personal, like letters or articles—and antique pictures of which I am the keeper.

He finished his project by filling out the tree with names, birth dates and places, and family common names (i.e. he calls my mom "Gram", I called her mom "Grammie", and my mom called her mom's mom "Grandma", and so on)—a cconstruction paper study of our history which he aptly titled "tree of life".

And our study ever changing study of history is on its way again.

This post linked to Ordinary Life Magic's Saturday's Artist (one of my favorite mama blogs)

The Mayas

Yesterday was our montly book sale. Calvin and Jon came to help first thing in the morning, but with Calvin finding a new book to take home every ten minutes, I'm not sure how much help that really was. Between finding books, though, he had a long conversation with the board president about penguins, the difference between the northern and southern hemispheres, the human migration to the Americas, and finally the Mayas. When I got home from the sale (after Jon and Calvin came back to help close the sale and clean up) Calvin and Jon had been, in addition to straightening and shopping, building a Mayan city. They finished it today. A temple, a ball court, farm lands, and even sacrificial altars, the city is now complete. Calvin alternates beween playing "classical era," when the city is inhabited and lively,  and "modern era," when the city is being excavated. It's pretty awesome.

Snow at last

Snow, and the beginning of civilization in America. There is precious little out there for looking into the hunter gatherer period in America, so though we've only just finished researching human migration into that sphere, I find that we are already plunging into the rise of human populations there. We'll do a little looking at the Mayan and Incan worlds, then we'll bring our focus to the nations of North America and stick around there for a while.

All that will be on hold for about a week now, though. We have the auto show on Saturday, for which we'll make another  and a big trip next week so I thought not to start anything new before we left. We watched two videos about the Mayan culture today, one a National Geographic, the other a Nova, but they fell into the "okay but not too thrilling" category. I did get a fun book from the library about the Mayan code with activities and crafts that sounds good, so we might look at that tomorrow, between packing and laundry, and all else that comes our way (more snow, perhaps? And a Gymboree sale at the local resale shop).

Life gets in the way

I haven't done a good job of keeping up here lately. The holidays always slow things down for me and we've had a number of things going on here that have kept me from getting back into the true swing of things. I still find that laundry is piling up, dinners are haphazard, and most of our days have been rather willy-nilly. I'm even forgetting to take pictures at all some days.

Still, life continues. Calvin has started theater class in Fridays through our homeschooling group (HAA) and was given a speaking part in they play. He has continued swimming lessons on Wednesdays and is really enjoying them. His current "thing" is still reading (almost every spare moment), with a side of Legos. He is now plowing through the Math-U-See Beta book, but we have stalled a bit on our tour through science. History is still a bright spot, though.

Today we effectively closed our survey of human migration and our foray into the rise of civilizations has begun. Calvin is seriously geeked about checking out early American civilizations, and I can't blame him. We picked up a few great books at sales this past weekend and are ready to decipher the Mayan code, etc., etc.

I get new glasses tomorrow, and we are in the process of packing for a big trip. The biggest Calvin has been on yet because it requires an airplane. So there are a lot of items on our to-do list for this week, all of them with a rather happy end goal.

Winter weekend

It started with a light weight snow storm. Not a storm at all, but since it's the first real snow we've seen all year any amount that called for shoveling might have been classified a storm. We battened the hatches and consumed soup and fresh bread in front of a fire on Friday night, and woke to a few inches on the ground and light flakes in the air on Saturday morning.

Saturday we made a book sale day. One of the only things worth getting up for on a Saturday morning is a good used book sale. We hit two on Saturday, and then our favorite lunch spot in downtown Ann Arbor, too—we were celebrating Jon's first published piece, which came out on Friday.

There was some Wii Fit Plus, some piano, a lot of book reading. Sometimes I feel like a broken record. Snap Circuits, Lego play, napping, and cozy fires.

Sunday we found a new video to add to our American history collection—Solutreans: The First Americans— that allowed us to discuss not only survival during the stone age, but also the concept of controversial theories and changing, or evolving, beliefs based on increased archeological evidence.

Our colds are almost gone, our energy is returning. We closed the weekend with a dinner party with friends, Calvin is in bed, Jon and I are in the second half of the second season of Twin Peaks (we have been devouring the episodes one after another after Calvin's bedtime, discovering a love we missed out on in adolescence) and we are ready for what promises to be a very busy week ahead.