Dear SAVY Parents!

Another thrilling day of stories, discussion, and research in mythology!  We are making more and more connections with these ancient stories to our modern culture in architecture, language, literature, and even sports!  We are observing and recording personal character traits for gods and goddesses and discussing what we can learn from them as well.

Today we specifically looked into artifacts and some recorded evidence of the Nordic and Greek/Roman cultures.  We learned about the similarities of characters and story lines in the latter, and began to correlate them in a table (to eliminate chaos by providing structure and organization)! It was fascinating to observe the students share what they already knew, as well as think more deeply about how these cultures both form and result from ancient stories.  We problem solved inconsistencies in the various accounts of myths with what we currently know to be scientifically true and compared other inconsistencies among the stories in different text sources.  We asked ourselves and discussed: How could these have come about? What implications do these stories have in preserving cultural elements.  How will these students use their knowledge of concepts found in myths in their future writings and chosen activities?

The children began to individually research a group of select Greek gods in provided text resources, and we look forward to including more online research as well.  Tomorrow, each student will choose a favorite to target their remaining investigations.  Tonight, you might discuss and observe lessons from our class that could be applied in your home.  What elements of Greek architecture can be found in your home that add to it’s aesthetic appeal or structural strength (decorative columns or arches)?  What positive character traits can your child identify (in common with a Greek character) that benefit your family (gentleness, generosity, strength)? Finally, my personal favorite, how can the concepts of chaos vs. structure and organization be used in your home?  This one of course comes straight from our creations myth discussions!  Looking forward to tomorrow!

Carol