Myths and Magic

This month, we officially begin a new 3-month theme - Mythology and Magic. However, the children have already been exposed to many myths, especially during their beloved Latin class. Sam's fifth and sixth graders have also read myths one-on-one with each one of my children, and that led into a discussion of common themes of myths.

And, of course, we've rehearsed many times the myth we were assigned for the all-school play (this Friday and Saturday - EEK!).

Speaking of the play, besides watching all classes perform short myths from around the globe, you will also see a few written/drawn works displayed (some children in older grades are already writing their own myths, for example, and some children have done some sort of art project). My class learned the story of Osiris, Isis, and Horus. I chose this myth because Horus is considered the hawk-god, and is often portrayed as having the head of a hawk or a falcon. Of course, we are in the midst of our big raptor/birds of prey project, so this was a way to tie in both interests at once. (I didn't think of this project, but our own art teacher extraordinaire Mary shared her idea with me.)

We took photographs of full-length bodies, cut and glued them to a pretty sheet of construction paper. Then we looked through a number of our raptor books to find a head that seemed to fit. Drawing that on a different color of paper, we added some details and then attached to the body. In other words, we did our own very quirky version of Horus. (Oh, and a side-note: As I was telling the story of Horus, it was mentioned that his parents were Osiris and Isis, who were brother and sister. One child exclaimed, "Well, THAT explains why Horus came out weird!")

Anyway, here's a picture of Horus:

And here are a few of our Horus-like gods:

Look for these and more at the play - Friday night and twice on Saturday!