Through the Eyes of a Roman

Romans were history's most famous mosaic-makers. Their mosaics were elaborate and breathtaking. We can still learn about Roman life from the mosaics that have survived the past 1,000 years. We observed pictures of Roman mosaics and tried our hand at making one. Using cut paper, we created pictures that represented some part of Roman culture. What can you infer about Roman culture from a few of our mosaics?

A Sunny Day in Staunton

Last Friday we traveled to Staunton to visit the Frontier Culture Museum. With outside exhibits that show how people from England, Ireland, Scotland, and West Africa lived before they came to the United States, the Frontier Culture Museum is an awesome place to experience first-hand the different cultures that came together on the American frontier. We spent most of our time in the West African exhibit but we also visited the 1850's American farm. Look through our pictures below to read about our favorite experiences!

We enter the West African exhibit through an intricately carved wooden gate

Passing around a carved wooden bowl in the man's house

Enormous yams...a staple crop in West Africa

West African yams can grow up to 50 pounds!

See that clay and mud wall behind us?

In West Africa, one whole family would live inside this mud fence 

Building mounds for planting yams

This is what a real yam garden in West Africa would look like during planting season!

Using real West African tools to build a yam mound

Jackson and Rhyane find out yam gardening is hard work!

Jackson digs away...

"Breaking up the chunks of dirt was fun!" says Henry.

West Africans would own goats to use for food and for their hides

See the mortar and pestal? We used these to mash up black-eyed peas!

This is the woman's house where the wife would sleep with her children

Outside of a West African house

Brayden concentrates...

"This feels weird on my head," thought Kristina.

Henry makes sure his basket is balanced!

Jacob finds out this is a little harder than he thought!

"I felt like it was going to fall off!" says Ella.

Kirsten isn't so sure she likes that basket on her head

In the yard of the 1850's farm, we picked dandelion greens

"When they didn't have fresh greens from the garden yet, they had to pick
dandelion greens from the grass," says Jamaine.

In the field of the 1850's farmhouse...you can see our guide on
the left and the farmhouse on the right!

Celebrating LOTS of dandelion greens!

Mmmmm...fresh greens

Ella and Abby found lots of dandelion greens under one tiny dandelion

In the barn of the 1850's farmhouse

Angel sits on the draw-horse to shape a handle for a tool

"Are you sure I'm not going to cut myself with this blade!?" thinks Ginger
as she uses the draw-knife.

Sam carefully uses the draw-knife to shape the wooden handle

Andy concentrates on shaving tiny pieces at a time

Meeting of the Athenian Assembly

Last week we reenacted a meeting of the Assembly in Athens. Ancient Athens was a direct democracy, which means the citizens had to vote to make decisions. Don't be fooled! In order to vote you had to be:

• Free (not a slave)
• A MAN! (Girls in our class were not too happy about this.)

The Assembly met on Friday to decide whether the boy who cried wolf was innocent or guilty. 

The Crime: A shepherd boy was watching sheep in Athens when he called out two times to the villagers to help him with a wolf. But there really wasn't any wolf and he laughed when they came to help. The last time he called there really was a wolf but the villagers didn't come to help him because he had already lied to them two times. All of the sheep were killed by the wolf. Is the boy guilty or innocent?

We made replicas of the disks that Athenian men used to cast their votes. The disk with the hole meant "innocent" and the disk with the bar through the center meant "guilty." When the votes were cast by all of the members of our class, the boy was found innocent! However, when the votes were cast by the true "citizens" of Athens (the free men) it was a tie!

 

Our homemade Guilty and Not Guilty Athenian voting disks

Head for the Agora!

If you weren't here today for our Greek Bread Luncheon, #1) You missed out on tasting some scrumptious Greek barley bread but #2) We wouldn't want you to completely miss out so here's a video of our agora experience yesterday. (Be sure to check out the Greek letters we used to make our agora stall signs!)

The Feasting Yeast

We are doing an interesting experiment to find out what is a feast for yeast? Yeast doesn't make its own food, so it has to consume food from somewhere...but where?

Who knows which ingredient will activate the yeast? Will it be flour, salt, olive oil, or honey (sugar)? We are mixing yeast and one of the other ingredients and adding warm water to see which one activates the yeast...OR you could say gives the yeast a feast! 

Each group got one ingredient to mix with the yeast and water in a cup

We made observations then let the cups sit overnight 

The yeast and the sugar started looking like oatmeal! It was a tannish color and had big white and yellow bubbles. The next morning it smelled like wine and looked kind of like mold. We all thought the sugar must have been the feast the yeast was looking for!

The yeast and sugar CLOSE-UP...yikes!

Experts in Our Midst

This is our Expert Wall. When someone becomes an "Expert" at one of these writing characteristics it means they have mastered it and can help their classmates. If you find yourself stuck during Writing Workshop - maybe you can't figure out a grabber lead for your story, you want to add some dialogue, or you realize you're starting all of your sentences the same way - you find one of these Experts to help you!

Since we're all learners in this classroom, that means we're also all teachers (not just Miss Payne!).

Gargantuan Gummy Bears

Macy, Ginger, and Jamaine are weighing their gummy bear and seeing how much grams their gummy bear is. They want to make sure that each side is equal!

Max is also weighing his gummy bear. In the left bucket there is 3 grams in it and in the right bucket there is 1 gummy bear. It looks like it is even. Now he is ready for the next task with his buddies!

Henry is now weighing how much his gummy bear. He is almost finished weighing his bear. There is 3 grams in his bucket. Henry is ready for the next step!

Now every group fills there cups with water. 2 cups get filled with cold water and the other cup gets filled with warm water. Each group gets 3 pieces of tape and writes the label on it so they don't get mixed up. Then everyone makes their hypotheses...what they think is going to happen!

Every group gets 3 gummy bears and then they drop 1 gummy bear in each cup. What is going to happen in 4 hours?

Rhyane is making his hypotheses. He is talking to his group to see what THEY think is going to happen. After 4 hours we looked inside our cups and found out the results. Here are the observations we made:

The bear in the cold water expanded to 2 times it's normal size. It feels squishy and slimy like jello!  The bear in the warm water dissolved! A little bit of the gummy bear is left with the color fading around it. the gummy bear in the salty water got bigger than it's normal size but not as big as the bear in the cold water. Small salt crystals or bubbles were all around the bear.