Magical Myths!

Written by guest bloggers Josie & Vera

Our Myth unit was so fun, so we are going to spend a little time telling you about how awesome it was! In the beginning of the unit, we got to take a quiz to find out how to decorate our flags by which gods would guide our odyssey adventure. I got Athena. Since I got partnered up with an Artemis, and a Poseidon, we themed our flag after those three Greek Olympians. I learned that Athena’s symbols include an owl, for wisdom, and a spear, for battle. She also had a city named after her, and the people in it were called the Athenians.

When we were done making our flags, we learned about the 12 labors of Hercules, and after, we started working on 12 labors of our own! We learned about the Greek gods along the way and the themes you find in myths! I loved labor number 6. It was the one about Persephone and Hades. Deciding whether it was a nature myth or a lesson myth was no Herculean Task! It was a nature myth because it talks about Persephone eating 4 pomegranate seeds in the underworld. (That's supposed to be why there are four months of winter.)

One of my other favorites was when we learned about King Midas and had to decide whether it was a lesson myth or a nature myth. It was only labor 3, so it was the first time we had read it in class. We learned about other myths too, like the Trojan horse, and Pandora’s box. Myths are so much fun to read and talk about. Did you know that there are over 200 myths? Cool right!

Every myth that we learned about had some type of cool character. Like Zeus is the king of the gods! Hades is the god of the underworld and Poseidon is the god of the water. They are all brothers. But not every myth has a good guy. In some myths there are monsters! They stop everyone from doing stuff which is why some myths are lessons and others are fantasies. Some monsters are sirens, Scylla, and Cybous. Some are beasts, like Cerberus

We have started on a stop-motion project too, and in it, we are allowed to take myths and combine them to make a storyline. Another option would be to make your own myth entirely! It’s like a creative way to show what we have learned. Myths were really fun to learn about, and we both had a lot of fun writing this blog post! We will share our animated movies soon.