We started reading the
Tales of the Greek Heroes this week, thinking that the tales would fascinate our middle son to sit still through a picture-less story.
We all had fun reading through the introduction and researching the different gods on Wikipedia. We then developed a reference book
with pictures of well-known sculptures depicting these "immortals." That helps our middle boy with his need for pictures, though after an hour of this, he was not ready to sit still for the stories of Hermes and Apollo's lost cattle.
After you-tubing a video of a lyre, we were able to envision what Hermes was playing (a lyre it is essentially a small, predecessor the the more common instrument-the harp). We even found a video of a woman playing "
Stairway to Heaven" on a harp, which kept us all in aye for a while.
Having a 19 month old in the home, we laughed at the possibility of him, like baby Hermes, playing a lyre and speaking so maturely to his older brother Apollo; "Hey bro, I didn't take your cattle and why are you being so rude to me, your younger brother!?" We were further astounded to read that Hermes grew to a boy within just a few days.
We also learned about Poseidon, which was the god of the sea and also earthquakes; which has been a fun, though crude, discussion in our house lately as our daughter has had very audible flatulence. It was determined that Poseidon does not live in the sea, but rather in the gut of her intestines! She objected and so it is still up for debate.
Everyone is excited to hear the story of Medusa, as is depicted on the cover of our book.
