The Mayans are so awesome and I don't even know where to begin in showing my kids that. Especially because every book about the ancient Mayans that I can find - we're talking pre-classic and early classic period (about 600 BC to maybe 400 AD) are NOT written for little children. There are books for kids, but not for little kids. As Joshua put it, it's like the authors wrote the books in a way that you start reading and then you don't understand what they are talking about so you're not interested anymore, even though it is interesting. Our best book so far is actually one of the craft books - surprisingly there are two of those. Before introducing and giving instructions for the educational projects the books gives explanation and history of the item which is very clearly written and explained, so we liked that. We're spending more of our time in that book instead.
Our two activities related to the Mayans for last week include food. Corn and chocolate. We made homemade corn tortillas and filled them with corn and beans - seasoned with salt, chipotle, and cumin. Joshua ate a little and said he liked it so much, that he thought he must be more Mayan than American. That was funny. But really, it was delicious. And our hot chocolate was a chipotle hot chocolate drink that the Mayan kings and queens were suppposed to have enjoyed. Cacao beans were their currency for a time so the poor literally could not afford to drink hot chocolate. The recipe was so rich that it tasted like drinking semi-sweet chocolate chips. It wasn't thick and oozy. In fact is was quite watery and almost gritty - with all that cocoa powder in it - but it was really, really rich. And of course spicy. We thoroughly enjoyed that as well.
Another thing about the Mayans that I particularly found interesting comes from two books. The first is called "The Ancient Maya" by Lila Perl. She writes, "With the advent of the Classic Period of Maya civilization, starting around A.D. 200, society became more stratified, and a powerful elite arose at such Maya sites as Copan in Honduras, Tikal in Guatemala, and Palenque in Mexico. The clothing, jewelry, and personal adornment of priests, nobles, and rulers became elaborate and lavish beyond anything the peasants and other working people of the Preclassic Period had ever known. But as the general wealth of the Maya city-states increased, the populace aspired to imitate those aspects of adornment they could afford." I'm not saying the Mayan and the Nephites are the same people because I truly don't know (although now I am interested to learn more!) but this one paragraph reminded me of the following scripture from the Book of Mormon, 4th Nephi 1:23-25, "And now I, Mormon, would that ye should know that the people had multiplied, insomuch that they were spread upon all the face of the land, and that they had become exceedingly rich, because of their prosperity in Christ. And now, in this two hundred and first year there began to be among them those who were lifted up in pride, such as the wearing of costly apparel, and all manner of fine pearls, and of the fine things of the world. And from that time forth they did have their goods and their substance no more common among them." Interesting. And if you didn't think so, maybe read it again and pay attention to the dates.
This got me thinking further, if the Nephite and Lamanite civilizations were indeed what archeologists call the Mayans (and maybe the Jaredites were the Olmecs) that would mean that history as we know it is all wrong, at least in a sense. Because archeologists are happy to tell us all the time that the Mayans worshiped all these different pagan gods - and I'm not saying they didn't. But there were a great number of them, and for a long time all of them, who worshiped Jesus Christ and believed the same thing taught to Adam and Eve and to Noah and Enoch and Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, and me. I think it is also interesting that every single ancient civilization we have studied this year is full of a gazillion pagan gods. But since Heavenly Father loves all His children, and we know that besides the "lost sheep" in the Americas, Jesus said there were other lost sheep He was commanded to go to, I don't see why there weren't other great and probably known civilizations that also worshiped Jesus Christ, at least for a time before they fell into apostasy. Wouldn't that be interesting if maybe the ancient Chinese also worshiped Jesus Christ for a time and had the truth? I think so. If the Mayans actually were NOT the Nephites and Lamanites, that doesn't really prove my idea wrong either really, but it makes it seem less plausible I suppose. I kind of seems like it is possible archeologists are only getting half the information about religion in ancient times and are assuming what they are finding about the pagan worship applies to the entire region the entire time, or they aren't understanding what they are finding and maybe these civilizations did have the truth, at least for a while.
None of this speculating is really pertinent to my salvation, as they say, but I do think it is interesting.
For the nervous system we've read a lot of really fun and interesting books. The nervous system has always seemed kind of boring to me, but this time around it was so fascinating. Joshua still maintains the respiratory system is his favorite and Abigail has more than once said her favorite body part is her trachea. (what?) But my new favorite is the nervous system. Our books were awesome and our activities were too. Our first paper was to color the brain and a neuron and label the parts and our second was an experiment testing whether practicing things could help our brain learn and get faster. We practiced reacting to a dropping ruler. We tried to catch it between our thumb and pointer finger and then measured and what inch mark we caught it. Joshua started out catching the ruler at about 8 inches but ended up at 3 inches. So yes, practice does help you get better and make things easier and faster. I tried to use this new and exciting information to explain to Joshua why he should be so excited about practicing the piano everyday but he wasn't very excited about that.
That doesn't sound like we did a lot, but in addition to the above mentioned things, and all of our regular learning things, plus preschool and music class for the kids, we did host 10 other kids this week at various times so we worked hard and we played hard and overall it was a great week.
Our two activities related to the Mayans for last week include food. Corn and chocolate. We made homemade corn tortillas and filled them with corn and beans - seasoned with salt, chipotle, and cumin. Joshua ate a little and said he liked it so much, that he thought he must be more Mayan than American. That was funny. But really, it was delicious. And our hot chocolate was a chipotle hot chocolate drink that the Mayan kings and queens were suppposed to have enjoyed. Cacao beans were their currency for a time so the poor literally could not afford to drink hot chocolate. The recipe was so rich that it tasted like drinking semi-sweet chocolate chips. It wasn't thick and oozy. In fact is was quite watery and almost gritty - with all that cocoa powder in it - but it was really, really rich. And of course spicy. We thoroughly enjoyed that as well.
Another thing about the Mayans that I particularly found interesting comes from two books. The first is called "The Ancient Maya" by Lila Perl. She writes, "With the advent of the Classic Period of Maya civilization, starting around A.D. 200, society became more stratified, and a powerful elite arose at such Maya sites as Copan in Honduras, Tikal in Guatemala, and Palenque in Mexico. The clothing, jewelry, and personal adornment of priests, nobles, and rulers became elaborate and lavish beyond anything the peasants and other working people of the Preclassic Period had ever known. But as the general wealth of the Maya city-states increased, the populace aspired to imitate those aspects of adornment they could afford." I'm not saying the Mayan and the Nephites are the same people because I truly don't know (although now I am interested to learn more!) but this one paragraph reminded me of the following scripture from the Book of Mormon, 4th Nephi 1:23-25, "And now I, Mormon, would that ye should know that the people had multiplied, insomuch that they were spread upon all the face of the land, and that they had become exceedingly rich, because of their prosperity in Christ. And now, in this two hundred and first year there began to be among them those who were lifted up in pride, such as the wearing of costly apparel, and all manner of fine pearls, and of the fine things of the world. And from that time forth they did have their goods and their substance no more common among them." Interesting. And if you didn't think so, maybe read it again and pay attention to the dates.
This got me thinking further, if the Nephite and Lamanite civilizations were indeed what archeologists call the Mayans (and maybe the Jaredites were the Olmecs) that would mean that history as we know it is all wrong, at least in a sense. Because archeologists are happy to tell us all the time that the Mayans worshiped all these different pagan gods - and I'm not saying they didn't. But there were a great number of them, and for a long time all of them, who worshiped Jesus Christ and believed the same thing taught to Adam and Eve and to Noah and Enoch and Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, and me. I think it is also interesting that every single ancient civilization we have studied this year is full of a gazillion pagan gods. But since Heavenly Father loves all His children, and we know that besides the "lost sheep" in the Americas, Jesus said there were other lost sheep He was commanded to go to, I don't see why there weren't other great and probably known civilizations that also worshiped Jesus Christ, at least for a time before they fell into apostasy. Wouldn't that be interesting if maybe the ancient Chinese also worshiped Jesus Christ for a time and had the truth? I think so. If the Mayans actually were NOT the Nephites and Lamanites, that doesn't really prove my idea wrong either really, but it makes it seem less plausible I suppose. I kind of seems like it is possible archeologists are only getting half the information about religion in ancient times and are assuming what they are finding about the pagan worship applies to the entire region the entire time, or they aren't understanding what they are finding and maybe these civilizations did have the truth, at least for a while.
None of this speculating is really pertinent to my salvation, as they say, but I do think it is interesting.
For the nervous system we've read a lot of really fun and interesting books. The nervous system has always seemed kind of boring to me, but this time around it was so fascinating. Joshua still maintains the respiratory system is his favorite and Abigail has more than once said her favorite body part is her trachea. (what?) But my new favorite is the nervous system. Our books were awesome and our activities were too. Our first paper was to color the brain and a neuron and label the parts and our second was an experiment testing whether practicing things could help our brain learn and get faster. We practiced reacting to a dropping ruler. We tried to catch it between our thumb and pointer finger and then measured and what inch mark we caught it. Joshua started out catching the ruler at about 8 inches but ended up at 3 inches. So yes, practice does help you get better and make things easier and faster. I tried to use this new and exciting information to explain to Joshua why he should be so excited about practicing the piano everyday but he wasn't very excited about that.
That doesn't sound like we did a lot, but in addition to the above mentioned things, and all of our regular learning things, plus preschool and music class for the kids, we did host 10 other kids this week at various times so we worked hard and we played hard and overall it was a great week.
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