Thursday, February 19, 2009

Roman Houses

They had an opening in the middle of their house which was called a "compluvium". There was either a indoor garden in the middle or...
and "atrium" (or hall) or both.

Under the left roof flap:
They had no electricity and used oil lamps.
There is a mural of the countryside painted on the far wall.
They had no windows onto the busy (and noisy) street.
Rich families had piped in water and even their own lavatory.

The house flaps to the left.
They invented underfloor heating. This is a photo of the ruins showing the pillars under the floor.
The photo flaps to the left.
This explains how it worked.

The top flap of the roof:
A picture of an apartment building and information about them.
The fire flaps up and left.
Then a page flaps down.

The bottom flap of roof:
Information about the public lavatories.
And a flower box.
The flower box flaps down.

The Baths

A nice picture that has lots of information about the public Bath Houses.
The top and left flaps.
The right and bottom flaps.

Feasts & Food

A plate with different fruit.
Each flap has some interesting information on it.
In the middle is a picture of a kitchen and all the slaves getting the feast ready.

The kitchen flaps to the left to show what the feast looks like.
In the middle on the top is some food preparation. The bottom three are the three courses of the meal and examples of what they would have had.

Friday, January 30, 2009

Shops & Market Day

This third section is about the shops and markets.
Here I am writing a bit about the shops and markets under each letter.
The letters flap open to show what the shops and market could look like as well as the coins that the Romans used.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

First Day at Brownie Camp

This week I went on a Brownie camp. There were 6 of us. We stayed for 2 nights.
First we had to "spot the hazards" so that we knew what was not safe.
Next we had to put up the tent.
We finally found a place to put the tent where there were no rocks hidden under the ground.
Our tent is up. The plan was for 3 girls to sleep in it the first night and then the other 3 the second night. But it rained on the 2nd day and water went into the tent. So we all slept in the wool shed the second night. So even though I did not get to sleep in the tent (which would have been a lot of fun) it was still nice to be on camp.
Here we are singing "grace" before our meal. We sang to the tune of "Superman".
Thank you Lord, for giving us food, x 2
For our daily bread, we will thank you Lord.
Thank you Lord, for giving us food.
Mom stayed for our picnic "tea" (or dinner). We went down to the river. It was so beautiful.
The colours were so amazing.
Our picnic spot.
We had to walk through a field to get to the river and these two alpacas were in the field with the sheep.
I had a wonderful camp.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Puzzle finished

Here I am putting the last peace into the 1000 peace puzzle of a Roman Villa that Mom and I build in just 1 week.
We listened to a lovely story set in Roman times while we built. It is called "The Roman Mysteries: The Thieves of Ostia".
Ostia is the port city just 20km from Rome.

City

The second section is showing what a typical Roman city looked like.
The key on the left shows all the different buildings.
The city flaps open. On the right is a picture of what the forum might have looked like.
In the middle there is a nice picture of Romans building an aqueduct and road.
The middle picture flaps up to show a photo of an Aqueduct. This is what is still left of it after almost 2000 years (the modern city is seen on the right).
The aqueduct photo flaps to the left to show how they made their roads.
And that flaps to the right to show a photo of what is left of one of the Roman Roads in modern time.