Hurricane season 2019 hasn’t even begun yet and we’ve already had our first official named storm: Andrea. Sure, she came and went pretty quickly, but it was a reminder that these storms are unpredictable and they appear and disappear according to their own timetable. And yet, we must continue to try and predict when the next weather event is going to affect us. We need to know when, where and how bad is it going to be. Technological advances in meteorology have made it possible for us to look into the future and predict with more precise accuracy than our ancestors could have imagined. But for all of our fancy tech, we haven’t forgotten the importance of our past. In the blog post, KIDS’ BLOG: Rain, Rain Go Away: Ancient Weather, Modern, we explore how scientists continue to use information about our ancient weather past to learn about and better predict the storms of the future. And, because it’s a Kids’ Blog, we’ve got an awesome activity built right in to the post!
Category Archives: Kids: Public Life
The LegacyQuest 2016 Letter of Intent Deadline is Approaching!
It’s not too late to get involved! Contact us if you need an extension.
Letter of Intent Deadline- December 11, 2015
Final Entry Submission Deadline- February 26, 2016
AntiquityNOW (AN) and Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI) are announcing a call for entries for the 2016 LegacyQuest International Children’s Film and Video Festival. The Festival is open to young people between the ages of 12 and 15 (6th – 8th grades) in the United States and abroad. It will be held in conjunction with The Archaeology Channel (TAC) International Film and Video Festival, May 11-15, 2016, in Eugene, Oregon, USA. Films must be produced in 2015 and 2016. Continue reading
Happy Hanukkah from AntiquityNOW: Children’s Crafts for the Festival of Lights
For Jews around the world Hanukkah is a season of family and remembrance, and what better way to celebrate the joy and miracle of this ancient holiday than seeing the ingenuity of students from the Hollis Hills Jewish Center Nursery School in Queens, New York.
Students at the school range from ages 18 months through five years old. The slideshow below illustrates the work of children from three classes. The Lego menorah was created by a student and her father. The children were learning about the story of the Maccabees and the miracle of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, where a small vessel of olive oil burned in the menorah for eight days at the Holy Temple. The pictures of the Hebrew letters Nun, Gimmel, Hey and Shin are translated “Great Miracle Happened There” (in Israel “Here” is substituted). Continue reading
Posted in Art, Blog, Culture, Holidays, Kids Blog, Kids: Art, Kids: Culture, Kids: Holidays, Kids: Public Life, Public Life
Tagged ancient history, AntiquityNOW, art, Hanukkah, Happy Hanukkah, kids' art, menorah
Throwback Thursday! Ancient Games and Toys
It is the season of toys! Parents are scouring store shelves for the most popular gadgets and games to wrap up for the holiday season. Today’s most prized playthings may take more batteries than those of the ancients, but our ancestors still knew how to have a good time. Consider the recent findings at a 1,900 year old Roman settlement in Germany. Archaeologists uncovered a board game piece and a die, proving the soldiers who lived there weren’t all work, no play. Read the complete article here.
Further evidence of ancient playtime was discovered in a 2,300-year-old tomb near Qingzhou City in China. The heavily looted site still holds valuable treasures, including pieces from a mysterious board game. “Archaeologists found a 14-face die made of animal tooth, 21 rectangular game pieces with numbers painted on them and a broken tile which was once part of a game board.”[1] They believe these pieces were used to play a game called “Bo” that hasn’t been played in 1,500 years. Click here to read more about this fascinating find.
To learn more about how our ancient ancestors amused themselves, check out our Kids’ Blog, Ancient Toys, Wii and You!
DON’T MISS OUT! Call for Entries for 2016 LegacyQuest International Children’s Film and Video Festival
Letter of Intent Deadline- December 11, 2015
Final Entry Submission Deadline- February 26, 2016
Not sure how to get started with your LegacyQuest video submission? We’re here to help! First, check out our page called Tips for Making a Video for LegacyQuest. Next, think about what interest and excites you. Do you like art, science, cooking, video games, reading…? Whatever your passion, there’s a fascinating link to the past that you can explore. Feel free to contact us for help getting inspired to make the best video ever!
View our invitational video below and visit our webpage for details about the festival and how your students can get involved!
Tomorrow’s Children: Reminder for Call for Entries for 2016 LegacyQuest International Children’s Film and Video
The lurid headlines grab our attention. Another brutal civil war. A wave of sickness claiming a country’s most vulnerable. Corrupt governments siphoning off a nation’s wealth and relegating its people to poverty and ignorance. Generations of tomorrow’s children doomed before they are born.
It sometimes seems so hopeless to think that anything can salvage humanity when for thousands of years we’ve done our best to destroy ourselves and the planet that we claim as home. But human beings are tenacious, and hope continues to weave its tendrils into our efforts, no matter how daunting the circumstance. This is why AntiquityNOW launched LegacyQuest. It is our own small way of seeking a better future by understanding and preserving the past. A past that through its archaeological and historical evidence both condemns and exalts the human condition. A past from which we can learn the foibles and frailties of human endeavor and always hope for a better, more harmonious, tolerant and free world. We dedicate LegacyQuest to that aspiration by giving young people a new way of looking at the world around them. And in that new vision, we at AntiquityNOW hope to inspire future generations to realize we are what our ancestors wrought, and that what we do today influences all the tomorrow to come.
Click here for more information about LegacyQuest or visit our LegacyQuest web page.
Posted in Culture, Education, Kids: Culture, Kids: Public Life, LegacyQuest, Public Life
Tagged AntiquityNOW, cultural preservation, education, film competition, film festival, global understanding, heritage preservation, history competition, LegacyQuest, middle school social studies, social studies competition, social studies education
KIDS’ BLOG! Picture This: Pictograms and Petroglyphs and the Stories They Tell
Update! This post was originally published on July 23rd, 2013. In the post below we explore the ancient history of rock art and how we’re still using pictograms to communicate today. Recently, ancient petroglyphs have been back in the news with the discovery of an ancient Aboriginal site in a suburb of Sydney, Australia. Researchers say the site is tens of thousands of years old and has probably been dismissed by locals as graffiti.[1] Actually, it is kind of like ancient graffiti and it helps us see into the past and get a glimpse of what life was like for the ancient people living in the area. The art is made up of hand stencils of things that were a part of everyday life, such as “eels, a spearhead and a crescent-shaped moon.”[2] The images are a particularly advanced form of aboriginal hand stencils in which numerous hands combine to form a particular shape.[3] There’s a waterhole nearby and the petroglyphs are on a rock overhang so the artists were probably living in this spot, using the rock for shelter and fishing out of the waterhole. Because of the size of the hands, researchers have concluded that this site was created by women and children.[4] Continue reading
KIDS’ BLOG! Take a Glimpse into the Lives of the Ancient Judeans and Make Your Own Piece of History
Have you ever sat down at the end of a long day and written in your diary? Or maybe you just updated your Facebook status and shared what you ate for dinner or how you were feeling after a difficult day at school. What if ancient people from thousands of years ago had done the same thing? We could learn so much about the way people lived, how they felt, what they did. These are the kinds of things archaeologists get to study when they are lucky enough to find written records and testimonies from ancient times. Continue reading