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| Amy Bernard-Mason and her son as Medusa and Perseus. |
After due deliberation on the Dolus aut Dulce entries, Bolchazy-Carducci editors have come to a
decision! Plurimas gratias to all who
participated in our annual classics costume contest, expanded this year to
include a classroom decoration category. From a modern maenad to Persephone
with pomegranate . . . to Elmo in a toga (yes, seriously!) and more, we loved
seeing the various ways in which contestants interpreted the classical world in
costume form. Classroom décor tended toward the macabre, with tombstones and
underworld-related iconography emerging as major themes.
Congratulations are in order for Amy Bernard-Mason, Latin
teacher at Voorhees High School and North Hunterdon High School in New Jersey.
The winner of this year’s costume category dressed as Medusa to her son’s
Perseus; in their submission, the young hero is in the process of slaying his
monster mom. Amy has kindly provided some more photos from her trunk or treat
event this year, in which she recreated Aunty Em’s Garden Gnome Emporium from
the Percy Jackson young adult mythology series. Check out the Medusa crime
scene chalk outline!
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| Amy Bernard-Mason's Medusa crime scene chalk outline. |
Our second winner transformed her classroom into the Greek underworld with the help of her middle school classes. Emma Vanderpool, Latin teacher at Trickum Middle School in Lilburn, Georgia, asked her students to create museum displays for the multitude of monsters that inhabit Hades. The result was a spine-chilling spectacle. See below for an explanation of her assignment. If you’d like to do something similar in your class, you may also want to use Bolchazy-Carducci’s monster of the month calendar blogs (read September’s blog here and October’s here).
Did you miss out on this year's Halloween contest? Be sure
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upcoming contests, new books, and conference and webinar schedules!
Emma Vanderpool’s Greek Underworld Museum Display Assignment
Create a life-size decoration for the wall depicting an
assigned underworld figure or monster
- must be in color
- may have items printed out (ask Magistra)
Create a museum card (with group members’ names and a four
to five sentence summary of figure).
Counts as a test grade for culture
- 10 points for accuracy
- 5 points for creativity
- 5 points for effort
Assigned figures, entrance of the underworld
- Charon: ferryman of the dead
- Hermes: guide of souls to the underworld
- Cerberus: multiheaded dog and guardian of the underworld
- Gorgons: snake-haired monsters with a deadly stare
- Geryon: fearsome giant with many heads (and sometimes, bodies)
- Chimera: a fire-breathing hybrid monster
- Centaurs: hybrid horse-human creatures
- Furies: goddesses of vengeance
- Fates: three goddesses who decided the fate of humans and gods
- Judges: Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus
- Hydra: snake-headed water monster
- Harpies: half-human half-bird figures
- Personification of grief (penthos), anxiety (cura), diseases (nosoi), old age (geras), fear (phobos), hunger (limos), need (aporia), death (thanatos), agony (algea), sleep (hypnos), war (polemos), and discord (eris)
Assigned figures, Tartarus inmates
- Danaides: condemned to carry water in a sieve for eternity
- Ixion: bound to a fiery wheel in the afterlife
- Sisyphus: forced to perpetually push a heavy boulder up a hill
- Tantalus: eternally unable to reach food and drink just beyond his grasp
- Tityus: tortured by vultures who ate his liver, which regrew daily
- Titans: the twelve pre-Olympian gods
To see how Emma's classroom transformation turned out, check out the following video!
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