Malahini in Greece and Turkey

Sean asked a very interesting question about what toys they played with (I assume he meant the ancient Greeks and Romans). I asked one of the archaeologists here if there were any toys that she could show me. Here are pictures of some of the toys.

They had dolls

Babies had rattles.

They had toy carts.

and they had other toys. This is a picture of a tiny chair, a tiny dog and a top (you know the kind that spins). This top is missing some parts, but was painted hot pink when it was new!

Today I hope to take some pictures of modern toys to give you an idea of what kids today play with. If I can do that I will include it in tomorrow’s blog.

I just want to point out that in one of the comments it was mentioned that “The True Story of Alexander” will be on the History Channel on June 24th (Saturday) at 8 pm. I won’t see it here in Greece, so I hope that someone who watches it will comment on what they thought about it!
Susie asked about “the picture with the children facing each other, holding on to the front person’s waist. The two middle children have their arms held up like an arch and another looks like she/he is going under the arch”. Wasn’t that cute! They were the first grade students. The game that they played went like this. First two students formed an arch and all of the other students lined up and started going through the arch in a circle while they sang a song. When they got to a certain part the arms of the bridge went down and caught one of the kids. The bridge then asked them which side they wanted to go on. They said right or left (I think… it was Greek and I don’t know the words!) and then the bridge let them join. After all of them had been caught and chosen a side they played a tug of war where each side of the arch pulled their direction. I guess the winners were those who pulled the others the farthest??? I liked that one.
The other game “with one child in the middle and the others walking in a ring around him/her was a little hardert to figure out. They were also singing something and somehow a different person was chosen to be in the middle and the one in the middle went and joined the ring that was singing.

The Alien play had a script to it that the teacher had and so I am pretty sure that there is one “official” ending, but I think it would be a great idea to rewrite the play (or to write it as a story) with a different ending.

The Greek word for today is yassas. I hear it all the time. It means ‘hi’ and people that recognize me say it to me if I walk into a room or as I walk down the street and I say it back to them.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 19th, 2006 at 12:27 am and is filed under Archaeology, Greece, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.