Cave Paintings! or….The Differences Between Girls and Boys!

This year we are learning Ancient History from Story of the World

with a supplemental text for Abigail to study in addition,

plus a good variety of library reads and historical literature thrown in.

Unfortunately our six weeks of sickness have slowed our progress in this subject considerably. Though we are way past early man and well into Ancient Egypt, I have put off most of our hands-on projects this past month, and we are only now getting around to enjoying some of these fun activities.

Yesterday afternoon to the children’s delight, I promised them that we would create “cave paintings” !   We spent some time looking at several examples of actual paintings that have been discovered in well-preserved form:

This one is from a place in France called Lascaux:

and one from Altamira, Spain:

and another from Ancient France:

and finally another from Spain:

We did our best to note special characteristics of this early art form. Then we spent about an hour making some paintings of our own…and each child put their own special touches on their masterpieces.

Here they are, hard at work:

I bet if you look at the pictures below you can figure out which painting is the one our girlie drew, and which ones the boys drew.  When Abigail thinks of the Ancients, she envisions happy, peaceful animals in a calm, pastoral setting. The boys are clearly more interested in warfare and hunts. Even the 4 year old insists that there is a dead guy, arrows, and several hideous beasts depicted in his masterpiece.

Abigail drew some serene-looking horses: in the middle is the mother horse, there are cliffs either side; there is a cloud in the sky, and the mother’s colt runs below.

Jonathan’s painting depicts a bull, a stag, and a boar being hunted by5 cavemen. Two of the three animals are already dripping with blood…their deaths are imminent.

Nicolas’ drawing shows a buck being shot with arrows (notice the gory blood spurting from its neck), by a hunting party, and one poor soul who was done in by the buck before the animal was hit.  He’s the dude on the ground with x’s for eyes, in case you couldn’t tell.

Here is Josiah’s word-for-word description of his “cave painting”

“There is a dead person and it’s Indiana Jones’ dad, and then Indy went into the big deadly cave and only he survived it. And fire burned all the persons that were not brave and they got dead, and only Indiana Jones survived the cave.  And the dead person was alive again, and Indiana Jones went back home by “hisself”. Also his dad was going hunting. But then his dad was too tired, and so Indy was making some soup for his dad.  Then Indiana Jones’ dad quickly went back home, and he had some of the soup.”

Once again we smile at the innate differences God created in men and women and how they show up so clearly at such a young age!