Have I talked much about my children's school? It's the kind of place that former teachers dream of sending their kids. It's an amazing place. A sort of waldorfy, montessouriy, crazy Vermonty public school where the nicest lady in the world makes HOME MADE BREAD every day for lunch and grows most of the vegetables for the school's meals. Where my kids have skiing lessons AND swimming lessons as part of the curriculum and where I have never once heard, not even from my ten year old, "I don't want to go to school." They paint and sing and go fishing and build forts and still manage to do all the normal school things. It's a pretty awesome place.
The first week of school I attended a parents meeting for the upper grades to learn about their systems, their reliance on kids being responsible for most things and just generally how things worked, and at the end of the meeting one of the teachers said "And the kids are not even allowed to ASK about The Battle of Sparta until after Christmas."
This left me a little, flummoxed, but I just went with it. I decided it was like the best piece of advice I got prior to heading off to the U of O for my freshman year "If anyone asks if you've read the worlds funniest joke book say yes and IMMEDIATELY WALK AWAY." It's the kind of advice that you don't really understand until the moment it becomes relevant, and then you're glad you know it (I used that, by the way, within my first few hours of being on campus) So I put Sparta out of my mind.
And then came spring and The Greek Unit. The kids are divided into Greek City States and are battling it out (mostly with costumes, food and knowledge, no actual fighting) for top honors a la the Hogwarts House Cup. Yes, it's awesome. And time consuming. But also fun. SO far we've made, two togas (chiton, actually, not that I know the difference, but he does) full Spartan Armor our of mostly duct tape with a wreath form and a little cardboard thrown in for support, baked Greek bread in the shape of a lyre, gone through two cans of bronze spray paint and one of red, and read a lot of Greek Mythology. There have been models of ships and usable battle carts and many types of food, all leading up the the banquet of the gods where Briton will be playing the roll of Pan. Hence the fur pants.
Now I just need to go make some horns and dye a t-shirt skin tones (he wanted to go bare chested but I'm thinking that's not really the best plan) and clean up the stray fur off my dining room floor. It looks like a particularly vicious fisher-cat fight happened in there at the moment.