Yesterday was our co-op day. We’ve been studying Ancient Civilizations this semester. Our focus this week was the Olmecs.

If you are not familiar with this group of people, they were an ancient Mesoamerican civilization believed to have thrived along the Mexican Gulf Coast from approximately 1200 to 400 B.C.

Our co-op is small-ish. Nine families. Eleven kids, ages 5-12. Five of the moms rotate lessons for the semester. Most lessons consist of several rounds of sharing information pertinent to the day’s topic and breaking between each sharing session to do a related activity.

This was not my week to teach, but I wanted to share my kids’ work, perhaps as inspiration, and definitely as a keepsake for myself to look back on here.

The first project of the day was making stone heads out of air dry clay, which was representative of the giant stone heads the Olmecs were known for creating. The kids were shown several photos as inspiration and given toothpicks and popsicle sticks to use to carve and shape.

A child carving a face with a toothpick into clay shaped like a head

A child carving a face into clay shaped like a head

A clay head with a face carved by a child She was so proud of the helmet.

Two clay heads with faces carved by children Hers and his. He was slightly less enthused with the project, thus putting much less time and energy into it. But he still did it and knew what it represented.

The second project was patiently wrapping rubber bands around a wadded up piece of paper to make a bouncy ball. They used the small rainbow loom bands. This activity was meant to correspond with learning that the Olmecs were the first known civilization to use rubber.

A child making a bouncy ball with colorful rubber bands

Two “homemade” bouncy balls

The last project for the day was constructing a pyramid with homemade Rice Krispie treats and vanilla buttercream icing (so, so yum…our resident baker was the teacher, which is always exciting 😋). This was a nod to the Olmecs building pyramids or pyramid-like structures like most other ancient groups of people.

A child making a Rice Krispie pyramid

A child making a Rice Krispie Pyramid

A Rice Krispie pyramid His. I took a photo of hers–which was wider and flatter than her brother’s–but some of the other kids were in the background, and I wanted to respect their privacy so chose not to post.

The Olmec lesson may sound somewhat simple, but doing projects with 11 kids can take up a big chunk of time. And some lessons are shorter or less involved than others. It’s so wonderful that each week is similarly structured, yet approached from a different mind. And we’re always encouraged to dive deeper into each topic.

Next week is my second lesson to teach for the semester. I’ve been excited about it since watching the Sight & Sound Theatre’s “Daniel” last month when it was in theaters on Labor Day weekend. So much to unpack and learn.