For the Love of Learning

Our Week in Phoenicia

This week we found ourselves on the shores of a new ancient land.  By way of background, we began the our homeschool history journey a few months ago in the most ancient of places ... starting out with the first nomadic peoples found in Mesopotamia, we have now traveled through ancient China, India, Africa, and finally Egypt.  We left Egypt with the Israelites and studied their move into Canaan.  Now here we are, leaping into the land of the little-known neighbors to the north of Israel.  The Phoenicians were famous for their glass work and purple dye, which was created from smelly sea snails and used to make rich linens fit for kings in neighboring countries.  They were a seafairing people, who ultimately may have been the first people group to have circumnavigated Africa. 

Our week was filled with exciting adventures as we read Virgil's legend about Queen Dido leaving the shores of Phoenicia and sailing to northern Africa where she established a new city called Carthage.  There, she met Aeneas who sadly broke her heart and left her to conquer Rome.  My youngest daugther (the "feeler") couldn't get enough of this story -- the triumph and the tragedy seem to excite her very bones.  My eldest daughter (the "thinker") couldn't wait to be done with the story, it being a challenge for her to separate the literal from the figurative.  She was instead excited by the tangible -- the geography and the archeology.

Ah, the joys of homeschooling.  Where one child is fascinated, the other is bored.  However, so far we have found enough ways to make each week of history study fun enough for both, in their own way.  This is what I love about it.  We have utilized so many different tools in studying history that there is plenty of love for learning to go around.  We finished the week with a craft project -- making our own dye with food coloring, we dyed penne noodles and made them into jewelry (as modeled above).  Although they enjoyed it immensely, both girls were adament they would not have wanted to be children in Phoenicia, working hard in the family business of making purple dye.  At least that's one thing upon which both can agree!