Mika, my 8-year old, is very much into ancient mythology (among many other things). But this is an interest I’m particularly happy to encourage not only because it helps give her a balanced view of religion, but because Greek mythology in particular is so fundamental to the understanding of Western art, literature and culture in general. Indeed, the more I learn about Greek mythology, the more I realize where so much of Christian beliefs come from.
Mika and I started reading Greek myths a few months ago out of the book Mini Greek Myths for Young Children
I love the book. I love how it’s organized – both chronologically and by order of godly importance (it starts with Mother Earth and Uranus, continues with the Titans and then goes on to the Olympians, before focusing on the minor gods and other supernatural beings) -, how each chapter relates to the preceding one, and how thorough it is in recounting the mythology. I also appreciate that it uses pretty sophisticated language but it cleans up the stories for the children (Zeus’ lovers are portrayed as his wives, for example). The one problem I have with the book is that it does not cover the possible metaphorical significance of the myths. For example, according to my brother at least, when Cronus , the titan ruler of the universe, eats his children in order to avoid them overthrowing him, he represents “Time” eating the days away. I couldn’t find any support for such theory online, but most myths were invented so as to account for natural phenomena.
But, all in all, this seems a very minor fault of what is otherwise a great book.
I am now planning to get D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths
Page 29 of 177
Today Mika and I had a great stay-at-home day together, about which I hope to blog later. But now I’m taking a break to write about two new (to us) products we used today that we enjoyed.
One is the Cranium Balloon Lagoon
Mika and I played it today and it was a lot of fun. It has 4 stations. In one you have to flick toads into a pond, in another fish letters to form words, in a third push levels to get the correct parts of a pictures, and in the last one throw pictured dice through a chute until you get the correct picture. Pretty simple things, but fun nonetheless. Of course, Mika won, I’m not sure it’d have been as fun for her otherwise 🙂 In any case, well worth $2.
Another item that we used today was the Conair Quick Wrap Styling Kit
Anyway, time to go back to pay attention to my girl 🙂
I picked up Clue Jr. The Case of the Missing Cake
It’s been years since I’ve played Clue
One of the things I like about clue is that while some strategy helps, it’s also a game of luck, which means that the younger players are not at too big a disadvantage.
Anyway, if you can pick it up for cheap, make sure to do so.
It really bothers me that Google has decided that I must speak English, so all the search results I get, at least for the few pages, when I search for phrases that are likely to have more abundant Spanish-language results, are in English. Clemente RodrĂguez is a player with my home team, Estudiantes de La Plata. You know that the information about him in Spanish must be many times greater than that in English – but just try searching for his name, all that appears is in English. Note that I’ve never set up my google account to be “English only” or anything of the sort.
I wonder how much information I’m not finding through Google due to this stupid bias towards English-language stuff. Lord, I wish there was a better search engine out there!
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