Toga! Toga!


Our family has been involved in an history co-op for the past seven years. Each year we cover an era of history and the six mothers take turns teaching. (Although this year was wonderful in that a couple of the older children/young adults [one never quite knows what to call 14 year olds, especially if one doesn't believe in ther term "teenager"] took on quite a few of the classes.) Since we do the eras chronologically, this past year we have been covering Ancient Rome. The highlight of each year is the feast we have to celebrate the end of the school year. Everyone dresses in costumes of the period we had been studying and we try to fix food that is an approximation of what would have been served. (There was great rejoicing when the renaissance rolled around and we could serve chocolate and tomatoes.) Often the children provide the entertainment with some sort of readers' theater. This year we had the (very) abridged version of the Aenead, with Aeneas' crew made up of many grade school aged girls wearing long dresses. I have to say, I thought this version was much more amusing than Virgil's original.


Actually, I've decided that my family needs very little excuse to dress-up in costumes. (I'm sure this all comes from the acting genes on J's side of the family. I can't recall very many times I dressed up in a costume as a child and not particularly enjoying it when I did.) TM must think that every family in the US dresses up in a costume at the drop of a hat. Since TM has been home there have been multiple costume opportunities.....Halloween (we had two princesses, a civil war general, a lion, a robin, and a billy goat), Christmas (because of the pageant...we had a sheep, a billy goat [yes, the same costume], a shepherd, two angels and a poor boy), Oliver! (I'm sure I don't need to go through the list again), M's birthday party (a murder mystery party set in Egypt in the late 1880's and everyone dressed as archeaologists), a friend's birthday party (also a murder mystery party, this time the costumes were literary/fairy tale characters, so we had Goldilocks and Huck Finn), and, finally, the feast ( most of us were just general Roman-types, but we also had a centurian and Ceres, goddess of the harvest.)

As far as I can tell, the summer looks to be costume-free. That's good. I can store up my costuming energy for next year. The middle ages follows Rome and I can no longer get away with clothing everyone in long, white pieces of cloth like I did for Egypt, Greece, and Rome. That's seven actual, constructed costumes (J and I can wear what we wore last time...it will fit, it will!) Maybe I should just start now....

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