History and Art Today - Mosaics and Viking Carvings

So today we finished the mosaic that Levi drew last week... it took forever to do.. not really though took about 30 min of cutting and gluing the tiny itty bitty 1/2"x 1/2" pieces of paper on there. I now have a new-found desire to thank every teacher that ever did that kind of prep-work for any of my classes as a kid.

THANK YOU and I'm curious as to how they never lost their minds because I was ready to hand my 3yr old the scissors and tell him to cut the paper.. we'd get the same effect just none of the pieces would be uniform :-P hehe

ANY WAY - the finished product is quiet nice and my son did a pretty dang good job... I will, howsoever, NEVER be making a mosaic card to hand out ;-)

Now what we learned was that the Romans (Roman Empire Era) made mosaics on the floors of their buildings. They used bits of colored rocks to do them. The Byzantine Empire Romans though put their mosaics on walls, think the Hagia Sophia or the San Vitale, and they used colored glass so that when the sun filtered into the rooms these wonderful masterpieces lite up and dazzled the senses of any who gazed upon them.

The other thing we learned today was that the Vikings never wore horned helmets .... amazing... LOL.. I never knew this.. talk about stereotyping to the extreme... that's all you ever see in films and the operas or books n so forth.. They also were masters of woodworking.. not just the beautiful resilient ships they sailed on but in crafting some truly beautiful pieces of art. I can only imagine how many hours went into some of the pieces ( look up the Smithsonian for Viking exhibits and view the guided tour - http://www.mnh.si.edu/vikings/start.html )

So for the review of the Byzantine Empire Art he drew the sky scene and "we" proceeded to turn that drawing into a mosaic. For the Viking Art review he drew an overlapping design that was then turned into a snake with A LOT of persuasion by the mother figure because this simple thing turned into an hour long issue due to stubbornness ;) The son is very much like his momma.