Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Greek Mythology

When my son was born, my grandmother gave me a very special book - Myths and Enchantment Tales, 1949 edition. It was my father's when he was a boy, and my favorite book on Granny's bookshelf when I was a child. It meant the world to me that she remembered how much I loved it.

We recently gave Greek Mythology a whole hour of its own on our schedule. We read one story a week from the beloved book, which is getting so old that I had to put it in the "untouchables" box of our homeschool library, for fear of it completely disintegrating from too much handling. After reading, he sight-copies one of the illustrations and writes a short summary.

The illustrations are dreamy. The English is ancient and full of new, old words to learn. He is fascinated by the stories, which seem even more magical when read from the worn, yellowed pages.

The preface (though severely politically incorrect) does a fantastic job of explaining how these stories might have been born by observing nature, and gave for a wonderful discussion on how we have always been looking for the answers to who we are, where we come from and how we got here.

2 comments:

  1. I love this idea; do you mind if I steal it ? :)

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  2. I really love it too. He's reading so much by himself now that I decided to read these stories to him, snuggled up. It's great, enjoy!

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