We'll meet you in Mesopotamia

Connie:
We started off the school year in style by dancing to the song "Mesopotamia" by the B52s!

The kids were gleefully pointing out all the inaccuracies in the song as they worked on their mural
about art in ancient Egypt. (A photo of the mural is posted below. All our murals are about 4' x 8')

This year we will be focusing a great deal on world history. Well, ancient history to begin with. We are using the "Story of the World" series by Susan Wise Bauer as a base. We work on multi-age levels and this series seems to lend itself well to our approach. We begin with the text and workbooks from the "Story of the World" and then expand from there for deeper content, accessing our local library and the internet, for additional source material.

As always, the kids are working on creating their own "text books." (This a Waldorph school concept.) The kids will continue working on creating their history text book for years, adding to them as we touch on new topics. Additionally, they are developing "Time Machines." The time machines are large three ring bound books that they have divided into millenniums, centuries and years, where appropriate. They insert one page information sheets in the appropriate place in time. This book format allows them a visual and tactile reference for when things happened in relationship to each other in time.





Teddy:
Hello, I'm Teddy!
We learned that Mesopotamia means land between the rivers and that this is a perfect name because Mesopotamia lies between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Mesopotamia is North East of Egypt. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers run through modern day Turkey, Syria and Iraq.

We also learned that later Mesopotamia was divided up into many city states that were constantly battling each other. The same thing had been happening before in Egypt where upper and lower egypt were at war with each other. Eventually, upper Egypt conquered lower egypt and become one empire.

The people in Mesopotamia had many different kings that ruled regions and sometimes the city-state each just had
one king for themselves but no one person ever controlled all of Mesopotamia.

To the South East of Mesopotamia there was a land called Sumer. Sumer had a king. One day one of the king's servants, while getting water, found a baby in the reeds. He took the baby back to the palace and the king said the servant could keep the baby. The servant took the baby and named him Sargon. When Sargon was older he became the king's cup bearer. The cup bearer brings the king his cup and the cup bearer must be very trusted because it would be easy to poison the drink. The king trusted Sargon but he shouldn't have. Sargon became friends with the king's army and persuaded them to follow Sargon instead of the king. He even persuaded them to kill the king and make Sargon the ruler. The army did! Sargon didn't stop there. No. He wanted to be king of all of Mesopotamia. Keep in mind that no one ever became king of All of Mesopotamia. Sargon used the army to take over lots and lots of city-states. He made soldiers move into the city-states to make the people obey his laws. If they didn't obey he would have his soldiers torture them. Sargon lived in the capital city-state called Akkad. He named his empire Akkadia. Sargon was a military dictator. Military means having to do with the army. Dictator is someone who is the one ruler and makes all the decisions. A country that has a military dictator is called a military dictatorship. I will tell you some more about Mesopotamia rulers later.





Billie Rose:
Thank you Teddy! Well, at the beginning of the school year we studied about rocks and minerals. We scratch tested.
We color tested and identified. It was fun! We also studied about Holidays. Well, thats all for now. Bye!