My little man is growing up. I can't believe it. He just started the 1st grade two weeks ago. 1ST GRADE! He's still kissing me goodbye, but I can see him looking out the side of his eyes to note whether anyone is watching. Pretty soon I'll have to settle for a high-five.
Hmph.
And…as he gets older, he becomes even more "boy." Hot Wheels. LEGOS. Basketball. Meanwhile, I'm running around after an 18-month old.
"When is dad coming home?" It breaks my heart every time he asks. But my husband is happy to make crazy Hot Wheel tracks around the basement, complete with loop-de-loops and "pools" of "spiders" that the cars might potentially fall into. And don't even ask me about the LEGO worlds they've created. There are Good Guys, Bad Guys, and Renegades (they work for themselves, obviously, and can be either good or bad guy). There's a single girl minifig. Occasionally I get invited to play.
If it weren't for crafts, I think he might never want to play with me! Thankfully, my boy and I have the crafty bug in common, which is why I was so happy about the From Left to Write August book club choice, Figures in Motion children's activity books Dinosaurs on the Move and Famous Figures of Ancient Times by Cathy Diez-Luckie.
When I first learned about the book choice, I let my son look at the website and pick the book he wanted to read and play with. He chose Famous Figures of Ancient Times. We spend a lot of time at the Rosicrucian Museum, and my son liked seeing the Egyptian man on the cover!
We needed brads or some other fastener to put our ancient figures together. Finally, my hundreds of dollars of scrap booking accessories can be put to good use!
In this picture, my son is holding up Khufu, a pharaoh of the 4th Dynasty in Egypt. Or as my son refers to him, "The Loser."
Sadly I have to inform you that two other ancient figures, Ashurbanipal (the last great king of ancient Assyria, who formed the first library) and a Greek Hoplite (the heavily armed citizen-warriors of ancient Greece) got into a fight with Khufu. Khufu lost an arm. This picture was taken during happier times.
You're wondering who won? The Greek Hoplite. He had a fierce outfit, a shield, a sword, and a helmet that had a mohawk! Seriously, did Khufu and Ashurbanipal ever stand a chance? It's like Mr. T versus anyone. It doesn't matter who "anyone" is. If he's fighting Mr. T, you can bet he's gonna lose.
So maybe, these days, even our crafts are taking boy turns, where eventually someone has to fight it out. Someone has to lose an arm. But I'm grateful that my son comes home from school and when I ask him what he wants to do, lately he'll reply, "How about we put more of those ancient guys together?"
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Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book as part of the From Left to Write book club. – The Twitter hashtag for the From Left to Write book club is #left2write. Follow From Left to Write at @fromleft2write.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Paige,
My daughter didn’t want to be left out and has her own stack of figures that she continues to play with.
in this first book so we are offering pdf versions of ancient women to anyone who purchases the book. Just send an email to info (at) FiguresInMotion (dot) com, let us know where you purchased the book and we will pass on the free ancient women pdfs as they become available. Right now we have Hatshepsut completed and hope to come out with three more as our schedule allows.
These figures where first used by my children to supplement their history studies and give my sons a “hands-on” activity (while their older sister was reading and writing about ancient times…). We lost many arms and swords but the figures were easily fixed with tape!
We did not have any ancient women
Look for Famous Figures of the American Revolution and Famous Figures of Medieval Times next year (2011).
It’s very nice that your kid got to learn about Ancient Egypt. But actually we do not know that much about Khufu anyway!
By the way, the child is looking amazing
Adam, Egypt.
Free Egyptology courses and contests
http://www.ancient-egypt-history.com/