Myth Makers: Stories in the Stars

For the past five years, the Louisiana Art and Science Museum has invited my Myth Makers or Roman Technology students to run hands-on history activity stations at a First Free Sunday event. My students, ranging in age from 10 to 16, view this opportunity as a way to share what they've learned over the past year with other kids. The museum views it as a way to bring in patrons who love hands-on activities for their kids. I view the event as a way to promote the classics. I've been so lucky to have this event sponsored by the Classical Association of the Middle West and South's Committee for the Promotion of Latin and Greek through one of its Bridge Grants. The grant form is easy and quick to submit, and the committee is extremely responsive to funding requests.

This museum, with its mission, "seeks to enhance the understanding and appreciation of art and science for general audiences and students by presenting unique, educational and entertaining experiences that encourage discovery, inspire creativity, and foster the pursuit of knowledge." Local industry usually sponsors the free attendance, and they love to see activities that connect with STEM subjects. During one such year, we led participants in mixing ancient Roman concrete since a chemical company was sponsoring us.

In the first few years, we focused on Roman technology class activities like mosaic designing, writing on papyrus with authentic ancient inks, firing tiny catapults, building and testing small bridges, and assembling Roman arch kits. In our first year, over 800 people attended the event. Last year, we focused on Egyptian archaeology as the museum celebrated 50 years of its authentic 3rd-Century BCE mummy. We decoded hieroglyphics and mummified apples. We also partnered with the Louisiana Division of Archaeology whose archaeologists offered sand-art stratigraphy! 

If you'd like more information about how I train my students for this event, you can watch this webinar. After every event, the students and I discuss GLOWS and GROWS of the event, and last year, the students decided that they wanted to host a "myth con," or an event that centered ancient Greek mythology. When I offered this idea to the museum, the staff loved it. Before we knew it, it morphed into a collaboration with the Highland Road Observatory as we celebrated International Astronomy Day. One of the museum directors came up with a way to tie it all together; thus, STORIES IN THE STARS was born.

In the first weekend of May, we held our event, and almost ONE THOUSAND people showed up! My students devised a way to represent as many gods and goddesses as we could through hands-on activities. 

Here's what we offered:

Welcome Station - participants picked up a passport that guided them through the stations. If they brought it back completely stamped, they won a prize.

1. Weave with Athena - participants tried weaving on small frame looms. (See more info on teaching your students to weave with this lesson.)

2. Design a crown like Hera's - participants built and decorated paper crowns. (Don't sneeze at these paper STEM challenges. I can't emphasize enough the importance of being able to manipulate paper and tape - they are super simple materials that can yield impressive results. Don't believe me? Check out Godwin Morris' Engineering With Paper Website. In the event that you'd like to take your crown-making to the next level with a STEM challenge, check out this blogpost from earlier in the year.)

3. Write with Hermes - participants wrote on papyrus with oak gall ink. They got to keep their stylus and papyrus. Check out these writing lessons for more info.

4. Build a Trident with Poseidon - my students pre-folded materials so that participants could easily put together this simple paper trident.

5. Fire a Catapult with Ares - our classic popsicle-stick catapults are easy to build, fun to fire, and memorable to take home and continue to safely annoy family members. Check out catapult lessons here. I don't have an awesome shot of catapult firing, but instead look at these AMAZING works of art done by my students that we used as signs at each station.

6. Construct a Bow with Artemis and Apollo - my students designed this little bow out of dental picks and rubber bands with q-tip projectiles! And it worked great!! (If you're interested in archery, check out this STEM challenge on ancient archers.)

7. Taste a Pomegranate with Persephone and Grind Some Grain with Demeter - participants got to try tasting pomegranates while they listened to the story of Persephone and Hades. They also tried their hands at grinding grain with a simple mortar and pestle.

8. Forge a Necklace with Hephaestus and Aphrodite - participants made simple paper chain bracelets and necklaces. (Interested in making this activity into a simple STEM challenge? Read here.)

9. Listen to a Story at the Fire with Hestia - one of my students read from a storybook about constellations. SO MANY children sat down to listen to her. AND a local TV station interviewed her about the event. You can hear her talking it halfway through this clip.

10. Party Pics with Dionysus - several of my students wanted to dress up as Greek gods and goddesses to walk amongst the mortals. We had a starry background and props for cute picture ops. Poseidon counted over 100 pictures requested of him!

During the event, I had SO MANY adults (many of them parents there with their children) ask who my students were, what school they attended, and how to get into the "Myth Makers" program. This is EXACTLY what we want! I also had my students asking to see the exhibits in the museum. The kids won, the museum won, and classics won.  Here's to many more years of collaboration!

AD ASTRA: Classics in Space

Years ago, when I was teaching at my previous school, the 8th-grade science teacher learned about a program called NearLink, associated with NASA somehow. To be honest, I don't even remember what it was about, but she asked the other 8th-grade teachers to develop cross-curricular activities that could be incorporated into the space science lessons. Once done, the kids got to visit the Louisiana Art and Science Museum for a hands-on mission. I thought it sounded super cool, and even though I was a Latin teacher, I committed to finding a way to incorporate Latin into space. It ended up being an amazing rabbit hole experience for my teaching because I didn't realize I'd find so much stuff!

It started with my discovery of the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature by the International Astronomical Union. This organization, founded in 1919, oversees the naming of planetary features and new planetary bodies. Its gazetteer is a wonder of words - it shows all the named features of every planet, moon, asteroid, etc., and explains where that name came from! It was here that I discovered that all the planetary features of the moon are named in LATIN!! And that the moons of Jupiter are all named after the female victims of Zeus.

The Gazetteer led me to look into the mythology-themed naming of NASA missions. During that research (and trust that it was hard - the internet was just getting going in schools when I was doing this work), I found another fabulous resource: an entire book called Origin of NASA Names where I learned why early NASA engineers oddly chose the name "Apollo" for missions to the moon.

NASA artists included mythological images on some of their patches as well. The NASA Mission Patch Book has pristine images of all the patches and an explanation from astronauts of why they designed them the way they did. There's even some careless Latin on one! (Apollo XIII with "ex luna, scientia")

But hands down, the coolest classical connection I found to space was the art of Robert McCall. I had visited the Louisiana Art and Science Museum one day around the time of our school project and saw the most amazing, otherworldly paintings in an exhibit that featured his art. In many of his paintings, I saw classical columns, temples, obelisks, pyramids, and even famous ancient Greek scientists. I learned that the artist had painted the murals in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and had done patch artwork for NASA. Since I couldn't find his art online, I called the museum to see if they had more information about the artist. When I told the museum director about my classics in space project, she asked if I might want to talk to the artist himself. What?! I thought. "That would be amazing!" I remember squeaking out to her over the phone. She called the next day to tell me that he had agreed to speak with me, and then she gave me his phone number. I called him with such trepidation, but it was thrilling to speak with him. He answered my questions thoughtfully and even offered to send me some slides of paintings. And he did!! I still have those slides to this day.

I presented the lessons I created for the NearLink unit at the 2000 annual meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South in Knoxville, TN, "Ad Astra: Using Latin in a Cross-Curricular Unit on Planetary Nomenclature." There, I was approached by an online company that wanted to publish the project on its Website. It eventually won an award for creativity. Then the local newspaper, the Baton Rouge Advocate, called to interview me about the award and project. It yielded a large full-page interview with pictures of the students' work - they designed mission patches and wrote Latin mottos for the mission. 

The new Artemis missions have caused me to reminisce about that project so many years ago. Maybe it's time for a revisit! In case your students are obsessed with Artemis and the new moon missions, I've put together this list of resources. Please use it and enjoy the magic of classics in space.