EMPIRE OF THE SUN -- The Incas
Our opening day of Incas began in Pinon Hills at Collette Perry's home.
I was the visitor, and I shared a slide presentation about Incas and the people today.
I borrowed a Peruvian outfit which included this bowler hat. I also wore a long, dark wig.
Yep! This is how they dress. I also spoke some Quechuan to the students.
This year we added something new to our journals of discovery. The visitors brought little thematic trinkets to put on or tie them to our journals of discovery. This day I gave everyone a black and white Inca cross I made from fimo clay.
After photos we feasted. Every family brought two Inca dishes for our feast. I made chupe de quinoa, a soup of golden potatoes and quinoa, and Autumn made api de quinoa, a drink like the Mexican atolé, only it's made with quinoa. We make sure to label the dishes at our feasts.
This was one of our favorite parts of the adventure--making and eating fun, new foods.
After all that we did some inquiries. Collette taught us how to card and spin alpaca and llama wool.
Collette Perry made drop spindles for all of us, from a dowel, a CD, and a hook at the top.
Peruvian woman use drop spindles to spin the llama and alpaca wool.
Collette's son showed us their alpaca.
On the way home we stopped at another friend's home to learn about llamas. My friend's daughter taught us about them and took her llama through an obstacle course for us. This was another fun and interesting day.
Part of our study of all the ancient civilizations was learning the geography. This day we learned all about South American countries.
The girls made an acrostic of the 13 countries of South America starting at the top:
Fun Sisters Get Very Crazy Every Party! Boys Come And Usually Pig-out Big-time. Freaky! (The last 'f' is for the Falkland Islands).
Later they were given a blank paper on which they drew and labeled from memory the countries of South America.
Giselle wanted to try on this traditional Peruvian outfit from Ashley Crosby.
For a chemistry day we learned all about gold. I taught some key points about the periodic table and gold, and then about Inca sacrificial knives. I made molds of my friend's Peruvian knife that she just bought at Machu Picchu.
Each girl learned to gild a knife.
Autumn's real gold-gilded plaster of Paris Inca sacrificial knife.
Right after that we drove to a nearby mining store and learned more about gold.
This gentleman is a geologist and mining enthusiast. He taught a few more things about gold, and then offered to take us to the Mojave River to learn more about geology and gold.
A few days later the girls received a second telegram from EJ telling them he had found some lost Incan gold. He invited them to come help, and told them to expect to get dirty.
They received a list of excavation tools from me
and a port key, ala Harry Potter, to get to the Ecuadoran excavation site.
First they had to map out and mark off the site into squares...
using string and stakes.
Then they dug into each square being careful to put all the dirt into a container...
to be sifted through a screen.
Autumn found something gold!
Giselle later said that this was the best thing we had done for school that year so far.
Here is what their site looked like on paper, listing what they found in each square of the grid. Each item is also labeled with the square it was found in. I made all these from plaster of Paris sprayed with gold paint. I made models of my friend's Inca nick nacks they brought back from South America. Sometimes I only made part of an artifact. Some of the artifacts are are just sold "gold" weights made by molding the plaster of Paris in a paper cup.
Next was a great group field trip to the Mojave River bed where the geologist from the mining store taught us about the mountains and rock in the area and what is good for mining gold. He also taught us some mining terms. He was a great visitor.
He put a bucket full of river gravel through this dry washer which left only sand behind...
and then we watched him pan the sand in the river.
Black iron filings and these few speck of gold are what remained in his pan. He told us that gold still shines in the shade, while other sparkly objects will not. That is how you can tell real gold.
Something new I did this year for our journals of discovery was this: Put tiny things in little bags and glue them in our journals. For example we put these in our journals: iron filings from panning for gold, cactus seeds from the prickly pear "tuna" we ate, some kernels of the Aztec sacred grain amaranth, and some Inca quinoa grain.
People are so nice! This guy shared his time so freely and taught us a lot.
This was our last field trip with the Incas.
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