TheirCraft

Over a meal at our favorite breakfast place yesterday--with crab quesadillas, peaches and cream French toast, pancakes, and some duck roll with bacon--we were talking about the Greek gods, a la Percy Jackson, listing them all.  The kids have decided to create Olympus on Minecraft, their favorite computer game.  Together, they have built a floating city with temples to the main gods and a huge throne room with seats for all the gods (hence needing to know how to spell them.)  It's a great room with this partially-domed golden ceiling, reminiscent of the Pantheon.  There is also a gorge to fill with water for Poseidon and a lava-filled underworld.  I like Athena's purple temple.  Of course, I most like the creativity and teamwork that has gone into their city.  I can't wait to see what else they add.

A Budding Greek Scholar

Bud came home from school earlier this week saying he was learning Greek!

Imagine my surprise that this was in the second-grade curriculum.

He went on to explain that he was doing the "older student" level on Lexia, the school's computerized reading program and it was teaching him Greek root words:  tech, psych, tele, bio, chrono, and so forth.

Rarely getting the opportunity to put my eight college semesters of ancient Greek to use these days, I whipped out a pen and paper to show him how the Greeks wrote those words.  A mini-Greek lesson ensued, as I wrote those words in Greek, and both of their names, then changed the first lines of the Iliad in the original and ended with my favorite quote:

tis de bios; ti de terpnon;

ater cruses Afrodiths.

What is life?  What is love?  Without golden Aphrodite . . . .

I was rusty, but they didn't know.  And we all had fun.