Cave paintings---The Earliest People, Part 2

A cave art example from the book The Stone Age People

As we wrap up our overview of the nomads and early people, Red, Tom Thumb and I decided to do some cave paintings.  Needless to say, we don't have a cave in our suburban backyard to paint so we followed the instructions offered in The Story of the World Ancients activity book.  


First, I got the kids set up in their smocks (always an adventure) and cut a grocery store paper back in half for them to share.

Next, to make it more cave like and less grocery bag like in texture, the kids did some paper squishing.  Tom Thumb was a tough guy.

Red really put a lot of effort into the smushing.

Then, I mixed them up some brown, red, and tan paint and they got started.

A good book that I found at the library for this time period is called The Stone Age People.  If you have a problem with depicting prehistoric man to your kids, this book isn't for you, but if that doesn't trouble you ---what a great resource!  There are TONS of different activities in this book.  There are similar activities to what is suggested in the Story of the World activity book but go into much more detail plus much more.  There were two pages in the book devoted just to cave painting which Red used as reference when she was doing her painting.

Here are the finished works.  First up is Tom Thumb's painting.  I haven't done nearly as much painting with him as I did with Red at that age.  I think we should do it more often!

Next up---Red's masterpiece featuring a horse, reindeer, and wild cow.

We had a grand time cave painting!  Now we're on to Egypt!  I just ordered the Lift the Lid on the Mummies book and make your own mummy kit.  One of the upcoming activities is mummifying a chicken.  Yep, a chicken.  To be honest, I was kind of grossed up by having a raw chicken hanging around drying out in my house for six weeks, not to mention I can't imagine how our two cats would feel about that.  The Cobbler wasn't thrilled either.  He said, "You won't let me eat a chicken, but you'll make a chicken into a mummy?!?!"  Another blogger who I follow suggested this kit.  It looks pretty good so I'm hopeful that it will be an interesting project.

The Cobbler and I managed to sneak out for a couple of hours to go out to eat for our anniversary.  We went to one of our favorite places in Ypsilanti called The Sidetrack.  I ordered a tempeh philly with sweet potato fries and it was outstanding!  For a second there I thought they had made a mistake and given me the meat version---it was that good!  

Today we're off to swim at the hotel again and probably do some household organizing.  I was teasing one of my friends yesterday that sometimes I wish I could just sweep everything into a garbage bag and throw it away!  We just have too much stuff.  As soon as I get rid of something, something else arrives to take its place! 

Three cheers for the weekend!