The War Is Over

The Greeks won and Troy has been sacked. We finished the Iliad today. The version we read was a condensed kiddo version by Kingfisher. I skipped over most of the gory middle part and today we read the last chapter which was about Paris shooting an arrow through Achilles' heel and killing him.

E was especially fascinated by this. There was a picture in our book of Achilles' mom, Thetis, holding onto Achilles as a baby as she dipped him in the protective waters of the river Styx. The picture clearly shows her holding him by his heel, thereby leaving that area of his body unprotected by the magical waters. E thought of other ways Thetis could have dipped Achilles without leaving a weak spot. It was fun to listen to her creative ideas like putting him in a basket with a lid and dropping that in.

L loved the part about the Trojan horse being pulled into the city with the dangerous warriors hiding inside. Over the weekend I found him sneaking into my office to take the Iliad down and reading it himself. He really enjoyed this story. In fact, they are acting it out as I type this in the other room. N is Odysseus and L is Achilles.

I loved how it gave us a chance to talk about how "Good" guys may not always be good and "Bad" guys may not always be bad. Throughout the Iliad they found themselves rooting for Greeks one minute and then for the Trojans the next. They saw how the heroes and gods had huge character flaws and sometimes act horribly. This was the first book they've read whose characters had a mixed bag of traits like that. Now that is a life lesson!

One of my top goals in their education is to provide pegs for them to hang future knowledge upon. Homer, Greeks, Trojans, Achilles' heel, Trojan Horse, Zeus, Poseidon, Odysseus, Paris, Helen , Hector. CHECK!