Story of the World: Introduction

Crazy Bug had so much fun with our first Story of the World chapter!  We started by reading the introduction together.  Then I asked Crazy Bug a few questions to help her summarize what she learned.  Our conversation went something like this:

Me:  What is history?
CB:  History is the story of people who lived a long, long, long time ago.
Me:  How do we learn about history?
CB:  By letters and carvings.
Me:  Can you say a whole sentence about that?  We learn..."
CB: We learn about history by reading letters and carvings that people wrote a long time ago.

Next we read a story to learn more about what archaeologists do.  I highly recommend Archaeologists Dig for Clues by Kate Duke.  Although it's a bit longer than Crazy Bug's usual tolerance for nonfiction, she was fascinated!  She couldn't wait to go on our own "archaeological dig".

I gathered up some artifacts from around our house and we headed down to a deserted beach.  We used sticks and string to make a 3x3 grid in the sand.  I buried the objects, then Crazy Bug carefully dug them up, brushed them clean, and recorded the objects and their locations on our log.  Each item was placed in a carefully labelled bag for the trip back to the "laboratory".  We imagined we were archaeologists from the future and tried to learn as much as we could from the items.  ("This envelope has printing on it!  They must have known how to print things and had a mail service!")

I have to say, I've seldom seen Crazy Bug quite so excited as she was about this dig!