Whodunit

I hope no one ever tells my boys that history is boring.

Well, even if someone did tell them that, they probably wouldn't believe it.  After all, they know that history is incredibly interesting because 1) it's a story, and who doesn't love a good story? and 2) most of the stories are about battles that took place in the past!  Reading about or listening to stories about war--boring?  Not a chance!

It's not at all uncommon for the battles we read about to be enacted here in our home with LEGOs; in fact, Josiah recently asked me to google how many soldiers are in a squadron so he could get his opponents set up realistically.  :)  So, after reading (in The Story of the World, Volume One--our main history text for this year) about the mythical minotaur who lived in the labyrinth under the palace  of Crete, it was a no-brainer to decide to do the optional activity: constructing a maze out of LEGOs and demonstrating Theseus making his way through the labyrinth with his cord so that he can kill the minotaur and still find his way out again.  That sounds like just the kind of activity my boys would love.

Josiah and David both set to work eagerly.  I had given them the option of working on this project together or separately, and they unanimously voted for separately.  In the end, we had two labyrinths; and my question to you is:  which boy constructed which maze?

Labyrinth A:

The cord tied to the doorway so poor ol' Theseus could make his way out of the maze...

The green block is the minotaur (or maybe it's Theseus...I can't remember)...

Labyrinth B:

I think the pink block is the minotaur and the yellow blocks to its left are the throne on which it sat.  Theseus would be the yellow-on-top-of-blue blocks to the right...and of course, the life-saving black cord is present.

Can you guess who did which one?  When we showed off the completed projects to Grandpa, Grandma, and Dad, two out of the three of them guessed correctly (Jeff was actually the one who got it wrong, but he was thinking too deeply and analyzing it more than he should have, I think..he should have taken it at face value).  :)




I'm not going to leave you in suspense, because I might forget to come back and put up a post revealing the answer and that's so frustrating to be left hanging (not that any of my readers would lose sleep over this, but still...I do want to be a considerate blogger).  So...




I don't have a good picture of the creator of Labyrinth A with his creation, but here is Labyrinth B's maker:

Yes, David made the colorful one.

Josiah's was the one with more muted, realistic colors.

As soon as I saw how these construction projects were developing, I couldn't help but think back to this post from 2008 which showed how differently Josiah and David painted an identical picture.  For all their similarities (same gene pool, same family, same basic upbringing, etc.), they certainly are unique in how they view the world...and in how they construct a labyrinth.  :)