SOTW Chapter 3: The First Writing

This chapter covered cuneiform and hieroglyphs--the first writing in Mesopotamia and Egypt, respectively.  After a little bit of discussion, Connor remembered which writing came from where and that cuneiform was carved into clay tablets while hieroglyphs were carved into stone.  When we talked about how Egyptians later developed papyrus, he got a little confused and kept listing papyrus as a type of writing rather than a surface for writing on, but eventually we got it straightened out!

The hands-on project we did for this chapter was to make a clay tablet with his name written in cuneiform.  We used screwdrivers for creating the wedges, and he really enjoyed working with the clay.

The large piece of clay was his name tablet; the smaller piece was our "scratch pad" for experimenting until we got the hang of writing the symbols.

Just a side note: When you're using Crayola Air-Dry, there's a point after a day or two of drying when it feels dry, but it really needs a bit more time.  It almost feels chalky, and it's really easy to break at this point.  Which reminds me--I need to add superglue to the Wal-Mart list.  Sigh.