Cookie Colosseum

Xander has been reading the Percy Jackson and the Olympians and the Heroes of Olympus series (again and again and again).  He has become a little obsessed with Greek and Roman mythology.  To try to feed this interest, I suggested we try to build a Parthenon out of cookies.  He liked the idea, but decided he'd rather build a Colosseum.

We started out by Googling some pictures of the Colosseum.  I also found an illustration in our Encyclopedia of the Ancient World and dug out our toy Colosseum from his World Landmarks Toob.  We also found a two episode documentary on the Colosseum on Amazon Video that we watched.

We used the Betty Crocker Gingerbread House Frosting recipe as our mortar and wafer cookies are our stones.

I had him start by trimming some down and start figuring out a layout before actually frosting them together. Then it was time to start building!  He ended up cutting the wafers into thirds for supports and then using a whole wafer with the corners trimmed as the top of the arch.

He was pretty proud of his final creation. It was a little wonky looking, but I was impressed with how long it was able to hold his attention.  He is not a kid who loves arts and crafts.

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Developing Interests: States

A huge part of early education is following the child's lead.  Personally, I hate do not care for geography.  I'm horrible at it, I have no interest, enough said.  Well Xander, on the other hand, has developed a huge interest in the states.  It started when about a month ago when I took the tray off his high chair and bought him a United States place-mat.  He, of course, started asking about all of the states and who lived in each one.  Because he was so interested, I showed him the following video of Fifty Nifty United States.  He was totally hooked!  I was happy because of the way it depicts the states, it is very similar to the Doman method of flashing.  He likes to replay it during breakfast, so I now start humming it every time I go to pack our lunches.  He is learning so quickly, that he used some of his money to but a wooden states puzzle.  We're now working on learning where all the states go and what all of their capitals are (I say we, because I have forgotten the majority of the capitals and am relearning them right along with him).  This is not the subject area I thought we would be working on this fall, but I find myself enjoying it simply because he is so enthusiastic!  I cannot wait to see down what other learning paths he chooses to lead us.

Xander randomly singing the states song...

Working on his puzzle.