The final battle in the Odyssey is an extremely action-packed story that can be very very fun to act out! You will need:

A simple bow -- one that is large enough to be very difficult for the children to string.
Enough foamy swords for everyone.
Do not bring any real arrows!

1. Hide all the swords in the wine cellar.
2. Everyone is now a suitor, but someone is Odysseus in disguise! We don't know who! Pick the biggest, strongest, tallest student to go last.








3. Have all the suitors try to string the bow. With any luck, only the biggest, strongest kid will get it strung. If it doesn't go that way, just improvise. I had two Odysseuses in the same class, and it worked out fine!
4. Once Odysseus strings the bow, take the bow away and now you become Odysseus. Act out how he transformed back into his glorious strong radiant form, and immediately shot one of the suitors in the throat. Wow! Action! Intensity!
5. Now someone needs to sneak down to the wine cellar and arm the suitors! Have one of the students hand out the swords quickly while Odysseus is making hay with his bow!
6. When everyone is armed, say that they can all try to kill you with their foam swords while you count backwards from 20 to 1. Hopefully, you will survive. If you yell "No killing on the face!" a few times in between counting, you should be alright. But you might want to remove all glasses from you and the children before engaging in this battle.





This activity was planned and executed at our homeschool co-op, Homeschool Out of the Box, for my elementary literature class on The Odyssey. For more of my Odyssey ideas and plans, click on the Odyssey tag at the bottom of the post.

Labels: classical literature, homeschool, homeschool co-op, lesson plans, odysseus, odyssey

Every day Penelope worked on her tapestry, and every night she picked out the stitches. She promised the suitors that she would marry one of them just as soon as she got done with the tapestry, but she never got done!

It's very easy for children to weave on a simple loom that you can construct out of cardboard or plastic. For a rectangular piece, notch the top and bottom of the rectangle. Set up the loom by starting the yarn at the bottom, then going up to the first notch on top, over one notch, back down, over one, back up, etc. until you get to the end. Wrap the end around the last notch, put a yarn needle on the leftover yarn, and you're ready to start weaving! Do a few rows on each loom to get the kids going and give them an idea over over-under-over-under, and make sure they know that the stitches alternate by rows. So if you went over it last time, you're going under it this time.

You can also make a circular loom -- we used empty soup containers -- or a loom that goes on the back and front of a rectangle at the same time by winding the yarn over the back side too.

Here is a page with really great instructions on making homemade looms out of recycled materials.

And here are some pictures of our Penelopes. They enjoyed the project very much and it even spilled over into lunch time:









This activity was planned and executed at our homeschool co-op, Homeschool Out of the Box, for my elementary literature class on The Odyssey. For more of my Odyssey ideas and plans, click on the Odyssey tag at the bottom of the post.

Labels: classical literature, homeschool, homeschool co-op, lesosn plans, odysseus, odyssey, penelope, weaving

When the Greeks went to the Underworld, they had specific instructions from Circe for how to give the ghosts life and health. If they prepared this special concoction, and allowed the ghosts to drink it, the ghosts could gain human form and speech. They were to dig a trench and fill it up with the stuff ghosts just loooove to eat. So, here's the recipe:

Blood (21st century Greeks may substitute ketchup)
Honey
Milk
Wine (Again, grape juice is an acceptable substitute for Greeks under 21)
Grain (We used corn meal for allergy reasons)

The exact ratio of ingredients is unspecified in the text but we just used a lot of everything.

For this activity you will need the following:

One trench. We used a long kind of tupperware-ish thing.
The four trench ingredients
Enough little glass bottles to hold some trench mix for each kid. With CORKS!
A ladle
A turkey baster
Creepy face paint.
Index cards
Markers
Tape



Before you start, have the children use the index cards, markers and tape to create the labels for their bottles. They should use a name like "Trench Surprise!" or "Trench Soup!" or something like that. Then set the bottles aside.

Divide your class up into ghosts and Greeks. On the ghost side you will need: Tiresias, Odysseus' mother, and Achilles. Paint up your ghosts' faces with creepy paint. On the Greek side you'll need Odysseus and enough Greeks to hold all the ingredients. So, here's how it goes.

1. Establish your trench -- put the ghosts on one side of it and the Greeks on the other.





2. Odysseus orders his Greeks to put their ingredients into the trench. As they come up one by one, you sit next to the trench and mix it together. Encourage everyone to be completely grossed out by the smell, the sight, and everything. Loudly yell "EWWWW!"







3. Have the ghosts come around sniffing hungrily and drooling and begging for a drink of what's in the trench. Odysseus must refuse all but Tiresias.

4. Let Tiresias get a big "drink" of trench and then say his bit about not eating up the sun god's cows.



5. Let the other ghosts come up and have a go at the jug.





6. When it's all over, use the turkey baster to put a little bit of "trench soup" into everyone's bottle. Cork FIRMLY. Tell the children NOT to let the bottles tip over, seriously. You do not want that stuff loose in a book bag. Of course if they want to uncork it once they get home, that's the parents' problem. *cackle*

The children enjoyed this activity very very much. As with everything else that's valuable and fun, it was a pain in the bottom to set up and clean up, but it was so totally worth it.

This activity was planned and executed at our homeschool co-op, Homeschool Out of the Box, for my elementary literature class on The Odyssey. For more of my Odyssey ideas and plans, click on the Odyssey tag at the bottom of the post.

Labels: children, classical literature, homeschool, homeschool co-op, lesson plans, odysseus, odyssey

The episode in the Underworld can be a gruesome, gory read. We tried to lighten the mood by doing "Blind Tiresias" drawings. Here's what you'll need:

Blindfolds
White charcoal (available in the drawing section at a craft/art store)
Black cardstock

You could do it with white chalk but white charcoal is much nicer.

1. Show the students a picture of Tiresias and give them a little backstory on him. Tiresias is an awesome character to use when teaching how one figure can appear in multiple stories, with different purposes. Classical authors had no problem sharing characters and overlapping storylines. Why? Because these stories are based in oral traditions and myths, and characters like Tiresias the blind prophet can pop up all over the place. A good run-down on Tiresias can be found here with pictures. I love to point out places where texts can be deconstructed and the kids can kind of see beyond the page, and I find that even a six-year-old can understand this stuff, especially when you relate it to a character like "the wicked stepmother" or "the orphan who becomes a prince" etc.

2. Blindfold them. Make a big deal about checking if they can see or not, but if there are kids that get freaked out by being blindfolded, leave them a crack.

3. Pass out the materials, preferably after the kids are blindfolded, so that it will be a surprise when they see black paper and white chalk.

4. Ask them to draw Tiresias. Let hilarity ensue.







5. Some kids will cheat, and peek! That's okay! Accuse them loudly and angrily, and then move on! Bring lots of paper so that the cheaters have an opportunity to start over with virtue and a more secure blindfold

6. Some kids will not cheat, and their pictures will turn out funny:





This activity was planned and executed at our homeschool co-op, Homeschool Out of the Box, for my elementary literature class on The Odyssey. For more of my Odyssey ideas and plans, click on the Odyssey tag at the bottom of the post.

Labels: children, homeschool, homeschool co-op, lesson plans, odysseus, odyssey, tiresias

These lyrics remind us of the folly of Odysseus' silly crew and their willingness to eat anything that wasn't nailed down, including the cows of the sun god, which they had been specifically told not to eat. The song is sung to the tune of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot. If you don't have this song on CD, go to Project Playlist and search for it, then add it to your playlist and listen to it whenever you like!

The legend lives on from the Athenians on down
Of the big sea they call the Aegean
The sea, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the face of Poseidon is seething.

Odysseus set out with his faithful old crew
From the war with the Trojans they’d beaten
Those bright ships and the crew were just bones to be chewed
By the gales and the gods and the seasons

Odysseus was the pride of the Ithacan isle
Where his wife and his son were there waiting
and all through the years of Odysseus’ exile
One hundred young suitors placating.

They raided the island of Ismaros
And left all the villagers reeling
And later that night when the ships bell rang
Could it be the West Wind they'd been feeling.

They resisted the lotus and poked the Cyclops
but opened the bag from Aeolus.
Lost all but one ship to Laestrygonian chops
but handled witch Circe with boldness.

They fought through the dangers to follow their vows
when they came to Thranacia island
And there on the green were the sun god’s cows
From their nice sunny pasture they beckoned.



Does anyone know why they ate those cows?
Why they couldn’t just leave them there grazing?
Eating goat meat would not have made Helios mad
Yet they ate beef — is that not amazing?

The wind in the sails made a tattletale sound
And a wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as Odysseus did, too,
T'was Poseidon’s waters come stealing.

The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
With the Mediterranean slashing
When afternoon came it was freezing rain
In the face of old Zeus’ fierce lashing

Odysseus sighed and he nearly died
For the good ship and crew was in peril
The rest of the crew must have sunk with the ship
Wishing they’d eaten something more feral.

Labels: ancient civilizations, classical literature, educational songs, gordon lightfoot, odysseus, odyssey, songs