The Eiffel Tower is in Paris. The capitol city of France
We painted the flag :)
The tower is 320 meters high. To help the children understand how big this is we compared it to the size of a average two storey house which is roughly about 6m high meaning the tower is as high as 53 houses stacked on top of each other.
There are 1710 steps to get to the top of the tower.
The tower was named after the engineer Alexandre Gustave Eiffel whose company designed and built the tower.
Gustave Eiffel
We attempted to build the tower out of Wafer biscuits and icing sugar. It was a little tricky it took a couple of attempts. We had a giggle trying to balance the biscuits without them falling down.
Once you have assembled the bottom part leave it a few moments for the icing sugar to set and it will stay in place better and you will find the second layer a little easier. Also it prevents the first layer from falling if the second layer collapses. We learnt this the hard way :/
Macey had a go making the first layer of the tower and Drew made a tower of his own.
We then looked at the pattern of the panels and assembled matchsticks in a similar way.
After we finished the activity the kids decided they wanted to draw some towers
Princess sunflower tower
Wizards Magical Tower
They then decided to get the lego out and build some towers of their own.
Once upon a time in the Celtic lands the nights became longer, colder and the leaves began to fall. The harvest season was ending and the winter was creeping in. The beginning of the dark season meant the door to the Otherworld would be open allowing fairies and the souls of the dead and other spooky beings to pass into our world.
The people lit huge bonfires and celebrated the dead with a huge festival called Samhain. They had huge feasts and beckoned the souls of their dead relatives to celebrate with them.
Today we celebrate this time of year with Halloween but all the things we like to do on Halloween today all evolved from the Samhain festival that happened lots and lots of years ago.
Carving Jack O Lanterns
During Samhain the people were frightened of the nasty evil spirits and fairies that passed through the door from the otherside. They did lots of things to protect themselves.
They made lanterns and carved scary faces into turnips and placed them in their windows to protect their homes.
Years later some of the people traveled by boat to North America (which was far far away) and passed the tradition of carving lanterns to the Americans. Turnips were really hard to find in the new lands so Pumpkins were used instead. They found that pumpkins were a lot easier to carve and made better lanterns.
We had a go at carving a turnip. It was really tricky.
Trick or treating
During Samhain the people left food and drink out as a peace offering to the spirits, fairies, and creatures from the otherside to try stop them from becoming angry. Over the centuries people started getting dressed up like the dreadful creatures and performing in exchange for food and drink. People started making Soul cakes which were used as a offering for the dead and were given to children and poor people who went door to door singing songs and saying a prayer for the dead. When a soul cake was eaten it represented a soul of the dead being freed.
We had a go at making our own soul cakes and sang a song that was traditionally sang in exchange for them.
I explained that Mount Vesuvius erupted and buried a whole city called Pompeii. Everyone forgot about the city and it was not discovered until nearly 2000 years later by a archaeologist. What is a archaeologist?
An archaeologist is someone who tries to find out about the past by looking at things people left behind. They look at skeletons and fossils and artifacts.
These are the things archaeologists found in Pompeii
Setting up a Archaeology dig
We made some clay (4 cups of flour, 1 cup of salt, and 1½ cups of water) and made a city. My children are really young so they were basically balls with there thumbs pressed into one side to make a door but they were aware of what they were and thats all that matters. We also made some bracelets and some vases that were broke in half (so they can be pieced together at the dig). We placed them in the oven at 180°C for 1 hour and then painted them.
I placed the houses in the bottom of the sensory table and covered them with sand. I then buried the other pieces we made along with lots of 2p and 1p coins. I kept half of the table empy so that they could move teh sand across later.
City before we buried it.
Becoming Archaeologists
A true archaeologist needs the right outfit and tools. We made some cardboard fedora hats using this fabulous tutorial by justjonty on instructables and equipped ourselves with spoons and toothbrushes.
Unfortunately I did not have time to paper mache and paint our hats but we will definitely be doing this later. These are fab to add to the fancy dress box. The children did not seem to mind they were quite happy with just the cardboard.
The dig!
We used the spoons to search the sand and used the toothbrush to rub the sand of the items before putting them into a tub. I explained that digging at a site is slow and careful work to make sure they don't miss or damage anything
I originally set up a archaeologist tent using a hula hoop, shower curtain, and ribbon. Inside was a table with boxes for them to sort out the things they find. It was too windy to use the tent so we had to make do with just the table :(
We used the pink tub for items and the black for coins. Once we got near to the bottom we started to uncover the city. We had to be really careful. We used our hands and the toothbrush to brush the sand away from the buildings.
My children were really eager to get the paints out so I thought we could do a little activity related to the Olympics.
Pierre de Coubertin set up modern day Olympics. He had travelled the world and decided it would be a good idea to bring all the countries together to compete in sports based on the Olympic festival held in ancient Greece. He made the Olympic symbol after seeing a similar symbol on a artifact from ancient Greece.
I put blobs of paint the colours of the Olympic rings on some newspaper and explained to them that each colour represents a different part of the world. The colours of all the nations flags.
We dipped kitchen paper rolls into the paint and stamped rings all over our paper. I explained that the interlocking rings in the Olympic symbol represent the friendship between all the countries.
