Greek Mythology Small World

We are participating in Suzy Homeschooler's new series The ABCs of Raising Well-Rounded Geeklings! Be sure to check it out, because there are a ton of awesome posts and activities being shared! Today is Letter G and we are sharing our Greek Mythology Small World!

For this activity, we used a shallow, round sensory bin, moss, green, blue and gold glass gems, some sticks, and our Safari Ltd Mythical Realms TOOB. The Mythical Realms TOOB contains: Poseidon, Mermaid, Chimera, Minotaur, Phoenix, Unicorn, Sea Dragon, and a Griffin.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.

Oh, we also used half of a coconut shells for the blue gems at the top of the waterfall. You can barely tell it is there, but it helped to keep the glass gems in place. We used the gold glass gems as the sand for the human city.

I read them stories about Greek mythology while they played for the first half-hour. One of the stories we read was about how Poseidon and Athena competed to become the patron of Athens. They both gave gifts to the city of Athens and the best gift would win them the city. Poseidon gave the people a spring that became the Erekhtheis sea and Athena gave the people the olive plant. Of course the people went with the olive plants, instead of the salty sea. The Parthenon was placed on the gold glass gems to represent the human city of Athens.

We created this small world to reflect on that story, with the waterfall representing the spring that Poseidon created that formed into a small sea.

This story led to many others, although we primarily focused on the mythical creatures, rather than the other Greek gods, since the Mythical Realms toob only has Poseidon. If you collect some of the larger figures from the Fantasy line, they have figures like Medusa, Centaur, Areion, Cerberus, Pegasus, Cyclops, Hercules, Hydra, Icarus, Manticore, just to name a few. All of the figures from the Mythical Realms toob has a larger figure in the Fantasy line. We only have Pegasus and Cerberus, which we usually use to represent Zeus and Hades.

Check out the Griffin's camouflage skills!

After I was finished reading some of the stories, I asked Bean what she liked about the creatures and what their names were, if they had one. We also looked at pictures online, most of them of the Greek gods and mythical creatures to see how they were depicted in art.

Bean had a lot of fun creating her own stories about these creature. In particular, the Phoenix had a wonderful story of rebirth. Bean wished that everyone could be reborn like the Phoenix.

She also really liked playing with Poseidon and coming up with creative ways for him to help the people of Athens.

Can you spot the dragon?

Do you teach your children about mythology? What kind of play activities do you set up? Do you read books while they play, or do you let them tell the stories?

You may be interested in these books from Usborne (click on the picture):

  

  

Follow Caitlyn Stock (Suzy Homeschooler)'s board Raising Well-Rounded Geeklings on Pinterest.

Fantasy Small World

We are participating in Suzy Homeschooler's new series The ABCs of Raising Well-Rounded Geeklings! Be sure to check it out, because there are a ton of awesome posts and activities being shared! Today is Letter F and we are sharing our Fantasy Small World!

To create our small world, we used a shallow, round sensory bin, moss, blue and green glass gems, half of a coconut shell, and some Dungeons and Dragons miniatures. We used our D&D miniatures because Munchkin and Bean love playing with them. Plus there are a ton of them and we can pick and choose which "characters" we want in our story. If you don't already own D&D miniatures, then they may be hard to find or just expensive. Our local comic store sells them for a couple dollars each, which I don't find worth it. You can use any fantasy-related toys, like Safari Ltd's Days of Old, Fairy Fantasies, or Mythical Realms toobs.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.

Since we recently played with dragons, Bean wanted to continue telling her story about the gold-hoarding dragons who now wanted to lay eggs. We choose a couple dragons, some heroes and villains, and a few random creatures.

I used moss and sticks to create a forest area. We added blue glass gems for a lake.

The coconut shell served as the dragons nest. We added some golden glass gems to the nest as eggs.

It's a humble set-up just waiting for the storytellers to arrive. We set up small worlds like this based on whatever interests them and it serves as not only a sensory bin, but an outlet to work on their literacy skills. Storytelling is a wonderful way to work on language and vocabulary, critical thinking, problem solving and communication skills.

This little guy is a mushroom-man. His story is much like the tale of the gingerbread man, in that he was once a mushroom that gained consciousness. :)

Here are our band of heroes. They are trekking through the underbrush to find the Drow, who are dark elves. Our group was stopped suddenly when the Drow sorceress cast a fire ball at them! Oh no!

Meanwhile the Cold Ones (Bean is convinced the ice zombies are the same guys from Game of Thrones) were busy trying to freeze the lake.

You can barely see it, but the Unicorn is chasing a tiny T-Rex! Apparently he's a bit nippy.

Mama dragon is keeping her eggs safe, while Papa dragon sits on the hill looking for danger.

Bean is convinced the lizard lady is Vastra from Doctor Who. Her job here is to investigate why the villains want to steal the dragon eggs.

Munchkin had a ton of fun playing with the rock golem and telling us all about the types of rocks he likes to eat, from gemstones to granite. Bean meanwhile left the dragons to their baby rearing business, while the unicorn chased the little dinosaur around.

Feeding the Rock Golem! 

Despite the small size of the sensory bin, they shared the area well and enjoyed playing together. They even worked together to tell a few different short stories. One of the stories was about how the dragon of the lake learned about camouflage. Bean told Munchkin all about this awesome natural talent!

By the end of the story, the unicorn somehow ended up being the true bad guy, who hired the Drow elves to cause a commotion, while the unicorn made off with the eggs.

You may be interested in these books from Usborne (click on the picture):

  

  

Follow Caitlyn Stock (Suzy Homeschooler)'s board Raising Well-Rounded Geeklings on Pinterest.

Egyptian Mythology Small World

We are participating in Suzy Homeschooler's new series The ABCs of Raising Well-Rounded Geeklings! Be sure to check it out, because there are a ton of awesome posts and activities being shared! Today is Letter E and we are sharing our Egyptian Mythology Small World!

We used a round, shallow sensory bin filled with blue glass gems, gold glass gems (amber glass gems will also work, but we only had gold ones on hand) and our Safari Ltd Ancient Egypt TOOB. The golden gems represent the deserts of Egypt and the blue gems are the Nile river. The Safari Ltd figures blend in because most are painted in gold. We also had maps of Egypt that were played on, and they matched the pyramids and sphinx to their locations.

Be sure to check out our post on Ancient Egypt, which has a list and description with pictures of many of the gods and goddesses of Egyptian mythology.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.

Munchkin and Bean helped to create the Nile River and made sure it was "bendy," like on the map. Then they poured in the gold gems around the river to create the deserts. They added in the figures after. Four from the set are missing because Munchkin was hoarding them. :) The figures stand up easily, despite the uneven surface, and the hand-painted details are amazing! Munchkin and Bean can name each of them and match them to picture cards. I just wish there were more god and goddess figures! :)

For this small world, the kids decided to take turns. So while Munchkin was playing. mostly scooping and pouring the glass gems and talking to the figures, Bean and I were reading stories about Ancient Egypt and playing a card game that we made. It's a card game that features Egyptian gods and goddesses, landmarks (pyramid, sphinx, temples), pharaohs, burial relics, and hieroglyphs. The game have two matching cards for each picture, which I laminated and cut out. We play it kind of like go fish, in that we ask the other player if they have a certain card and try to make a match. Each match is a point. If your opponent doesn't have the card you ask you, you draw from the main deck. Each player starts with 5 cards and there is no hand limit.

So for today, we just played with the gods and goddesses. Playing the card game worked on picture and word recognition, since under each of the pictures is the name of the god or goddess. I'm actually thinking of making them part of a 3-part card set, for when we aren't playing the game. But for the most part, the card game has been one of the best ways to learn each of the gods name. We even quiz each other to see if we can match the god or goddess based on what they were the patron of. So for instance, Anubis is the God of the Dead. So if Bean was trying to match his card, she might ask, "Do you have the God of the Dead?" Instead of, "Do you have Anubis?"

Once Munchkin was finished, Bean took over and told me all about what the ancient Egyptians were doing. They were building pyramids, carving giant statues, and writing hieroglyphs on the walls. Occasionally while she was playing she would stop to "take notes" in her own made up hieroglyphs. We plan on picking up a couple books on ancient Egypt and hieroglyphs on our next trip to the library.

Bean loves telling her own stories while she plays, but she also loves to hear about the "real" stories. So I often read to her while she plays in her small worlds. Bean loves "huge books with long stories," so I oblige her with our collection of mythology books. She will let me know if she wants to hear about a particular god or event, but mostly we just read them in order. Learning about mythology is a great way to introduce children to other cultures and religions.

Do you teach your children about mythology? What kind of play activities do you set up? Do you read books while they play, or do you let them tell the stories? Let us know in the comments!

You may be interested in these books from Usborne (click on the picture):

    

  

Follow Caitlyn Stock (Suzy Homeschooler)'s board Raising Well-Rounded Geeklings on Pinterest.