Archaeology

Today was a fun school day. We are using a plethora of curriculum including: Mystery of History; Creation to the Resurrection, Eagles Wings A Complete Guide to Celebrating our Messiah in the Festivals, Greenleaf Press books including Famous Men of Greece, An Activity Guide to the Old Testament Days, several books I got from Israel; including Food at the Time of the Bible, Life at the Time of Jesus and the books that we got from each place we visited, along with several library type books. (Make sure you watch the you tube videos at the bottom of the post if you have time.)
After reading the intro to quarter one and lesson one of Mystery of History, we did an activity that I based off a project in the Activity Guide to the Old Testament Days "Dig your own Archaeological site". We still need to do a wrap up and the kids will write reports (varying with their ages and abilities, but I am excited and so I will write my report here.
We read a book "Archaeologists Dig for Clues" by Kate Duke. It took us a couple of days to read this as it was full of information and could not be read and assimilated by my younger ones in one sitting. In the back ground, Jonny was preparing the site for me. First he dug a rectangular hole that was about 2 foot by 4 foot. Then we got two different terra cotta type pots, broke them into a few pieces and Jonny buried them in sand in the hole and then covered them with a layer of dirt to make it look like the ground prior to the digging. Then Joshua went out and placed the grid using stakes and twine. Then the Archaeologist and volunteers went out to do the dig.
I first explained to them about the grid and we played a game of where is the grid and I would call out a location "A3" and they would find it or put Daniel into it.
I was amazed that I did not even have to explain much about this and Stephen new where they were immediately. Then I explained how to dig in order to preserve the integrity of the site and then they went to work. They were each so excited when they found a 'treasure'. Stephen was a little dismayed when everyone had found one or two before he found one, but then when he found one he was doubly excited. Though he cut his finger on the find. After finding what they thought were all the pieces and cleaning them off and logging them on their grid paper the pieces went into the house so they could be reconstructed into their original shape. Or as near to that shape as we could get with a hot glue gun. (Though a few hours later I was brought a new found piece with much excitement!) We will probably read the book again and they will do some sort of report to wrap it up, but that will be tomorrow.