A Day in our Ships and Floating Unit-Study

 

We have had a wonderful day even though we haven’t gotten our “list” checked off today. This morning I didn’t want the kids to just spend time goofing off like we usually do when daddy is home; so I told them that after they finished chores, we could watch some movies we rented about ships and boats. We watched “Lost Ships of the Mediterranean (Mysteries of the Deep: Legendary Shipwrecks)” 1999 -from Netflix. Then we watched “The Pirate Ships: The History Channel (The Great Ships)” 2005 – also from Netflix.

After we ate lunch with daddy, he left for work and we did our prayer journals, prayed for America (National Day of Prayer), wrote our memory verse, and did a bible drill to see who could find it faster (Proverbs 3:5). Somehow, after that… my lesson plans seemed to be “stolen by the shifting seas”.

After seeing the shipwreck movie by Ballard about the lost ships of the Mediterranean, we were interested by the cargo of one of the ships and the descriptions of the possible origins for the ships. It seems the ships they found were carrying wine from Tyre (the ancient sea port of Phoenicia) and sunk in the dates near the building of Solomon’s Temple. The kids were very interested in Tyre and my son wanted me to read the Lord’s proclamation about Tyre in the Bible. We did a word search on Bible Gateway and read all of the scriptures about Tyre. WOW! So impressive (I had read many of them before, but after seeing the artifacts and maps, it was so much more REAL). Morgan asked me if we could make Phoenician pottery when we do the pottery unit. They had awesome wide-lipped pitchers with small ringed handles. We read in the Bible about how Tyre was a merchant city and the inhabitants were called the “princes of the sea”. They sailed with the stars and sun as their guide.

The two ships they found were melted away (understandably after all these years) and only the pottery remained. One was filled with bones (preserved meat that would hold them over if they ran out of other foods). After reading about Tyre’s Island fortress and God’s proclaimed destruction, we searched online to see more about the fulfillment of the prophesy about Tyre. We read a great article about the fulfillment of the prophesy. The Bible mentioned how the “shorelands will quake when your seamen cry out” and then…

Ezekiel 27:32 ~ As they wail and mourn over you, they will take up a lament concerning you: “Who was ever silenced like Tyre, surrounded by the sea?”

When I finished reading these verses, Kaden immediately thought of Atlantis. He got out two books from the shelf on Atlantis. One had Plato’s account of how they were rich and had many articles of ivory, gold, and copper. He remembered that the account of the Phoenician ships in the Bible said that their decks were inlaid with ivory. We all wondered together aloud if the island portion of Tyre that is now gone could have been the Atlantis that Plato spoke of? The book (Under the Sea by Discoveries – Barnes & Noble) said that people think Atlantis was the Greek city-state of Thera. The Phoenicians had city-states, too. Many city-states had their own “Kings”. From Plato’s accounts, the stone buildings were also similar to Phoenician stone ruins. Both were revered to be rich and sophisticated cities of renown. I don’t think Tyre was the “lost city of Atlantis”, but it is interesting to research and read about it all.

Another clip on one of the movies showed a Greek ship that ocean archaeologists discovered which was full of a treasure trove of interesting artifacts. It talked about the dangers of scuba diving and showed the crew sucking the sand up in a big tube and bringing objects on board. They had the floor sectioned off in grids like a regular dig and it was neat to see how each archaeologist was in charge of a square and worked so hard to uncover all of the objects in that one area. One of the neatest finds was an alabaster perfume jar that was so pretty and looked like milky colored glass in the light. Some of the pottery still had the telltale Greek black glaze in tact. Little clay oil lamps they brought up still had charred tips from being burned so very long ago.

Due to some of what we read about strange mysteries at sea in the Barnes &Noble; book, Kaden was also really interested in the Bermuda Triangle. He kept asking me to look up a photo of the triangle. Finally, I looked up a map of the area and we discussed the ghost ship without a crew, the missing airplanes, and mysteries that surround the area. Most of that discussion was from the book…

… which in turn spawned discussion about sea creatures and all the countless legends of sea monsters from mariners over time (Kent Hovind’s Creation Seminar #3 has LOTS OF FOOTAGE about this – it is a must see). My kids talked about giant squids and possible water-living dinosaurs or serpents that might have gobbled up the crew of the ghost ship. After all, they were never found and only some gear and a life boat was missing from the seaworthy schooner. The kids enjoyed this “spooky” ghost-ship talk. They are so fun. Kaden talked about how freaked out the people who found the ship must have been seeing it drift by without a crew in the mist.

We logged on to Netflix and made sure to rent some more groovy sea and ship movies and we sealed up today’s movies in their envelopes to mail them back. Next up is Sponge Bob (totally for fun – even though he does live ‘in a pineapple under the sea’). We talked about trusting God and how the thread in the ‘Princess and the Goblin’ (which we read not long ago) was invisible and how God is invisible and we should trust Him to lead us like little Irene trusted her grandma. Morgan also wrote a pen pal while her brother was finishing up his Bible verse and then they both did some games and quizzes on “Spelling Time” online.

In honor of National Day of Prayer, I got an email from a friend at church about Franklin D. Roosevelt’s D-Day Prayer after Pearl Harbor. I read it to the kids. ISN’T THAT COOL???? Not only was it about praying for our country – but it was tied in to our SHIP unit!!! Those are the little details that you find God in (they feel like a pat on the back to me).

After our dinner break (baked potatoes), we read the rest of Pilgrim’s Progress. Kaden said he “loved” it. “This is such a good book”, he told me. “You like it, hu?” I said as I smiled at him.

The kids sketched the characters in Pilgrim’s Progress (illustrated by Robert Lawson) before they got tucked in to bed. They are making bust popsicle puppets out of them and we are going to do a “popsicle puppet play” for daddy of the story (summarized, of course). The KONOS book actually said to make masks to do a play, but we don’t have the time, energy or supplies for all of that. We are saving it up for our GeeArt lesson tomorrow.

Morgan water colored yesterday on her day off. Both of the kids also colored in the “Shipwrecks and Sunken Treasures” Dover Coloring Book by Peter F. Copeland. I’ve included a few scanned of their finished coloring sheets to show you the quality of the books.

I got up at 5:30 to get my day in order… and the kids were up at 7:30 to help me clean up their rooms and make their beds before we did school… I SHOULD BE ASLEEP (I’ve been up for 21 hours so far…). I feel like I’m going to fall out of this chair. Kev wanted to hear about our day once he got home, so I ended up reading all of these sites to him about Phoenicia and Tyre.

Did we get Math done today? Nope. Penmanship? Nope. No Italian, no Latin… and quite a few items on the KONOS list are NOT checked off for today. We didn’t do ONE single worksheet. ALL of us enjoyed learning together today, though – even if we did it in a relaxed manner and enjoyed just being inquisitive. I also suspect strongly that the next time we happen to be in a book store; one or all of us just might go looking for books on Tyre, Phoenicia, the Bermuda Triangle, Pirates, Plato, Greece or Atlantis.

We still love KONOS and studying the unit-study way (after five years of it)… precisely because of how it encourages you to REALLY THINK and link things to the bigger picture and the Lord. Not only that, but we ALL LEARN TOGETHER – no matter what our “grade” or age.

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