It is not surprising that your children will more strongly learn concepts and stories if you revisit them at a different angle, and at a later time. But it was very surprising to me how successful and rewarding the process could be.
Yesterday, the kids and I spent some time with Ellen McHenry’s book: Mapping the World With Art.
The kids drew their own maps of Greece. This book is great as it walks you through the process step by step, until at the end of the book you can sit down and pretty much draw the whole world with a blank piece of (really big) paper complete with modern and ancient countries, cities, labeled landforms, and oceans. Ellen McHenry breaks everything down into easy and memorable pieces (like this here island looks a bit like a dragon that has left a trail of little islands in his wake).
As we worked our way through drawing Greece and part of Turkey, my kids began to talk about the ancient battles that occurred and the journey described in the Odyssey. They also began a discussion of the merits of placing fortifications at the Isthmus of Corinth as a way to separate Athens from Sparta. This went on for quite a while between them as we continued to speculate whether the area surrounding Greece was volcanic, with islands formed by hotspots similarly to the Hawaiian Island chain.
It was fun. It was joyful. And I think my children firmly settled into the logic stage of learning.
