The Green Mountain.

It took me some time to learn to pronounce King Nebuchadnezzar's name when we were reading about the Babylonian Empire and the times of it's prosperity after the defeat of the Assyrians, before the great city of Babylon was captured by an army from Persia in 539 B.C. and became a part of the powerful Persian Empire (modern Iran).

The girls loved the story of the princess Amytis being married the Babylonian King Neduchadnezzar and how she was missing the cliffs, valleys and mountains of homeland Persia. She missed the green gardens people built on the hills at home and was very unhappy in Babylon. So the King, being much in love with her, wanted to make her happy and, thus, ordered to build the gardens in Babylon, a dry and harsh place to grow anything.

There is not too much info and details about the Ametis' garden in Babylon. The historians know only some details, and apparently, there is no image of the gardens saved on any clay tablets, only verbal descriptions of this Second Wonder of the Ancient World.
We were able to find a book in the library with some pictures, looked up some info on line, and were happy to learn that we were free to create our own gardens on the mountain to how we imagined them.

We read that there were terraces, hanging plants, various flowers, trees, shrubs, bushes, from all over the Empire. Water was brought up but the pumps, so we decided to make a water fall in our Babylonian garden. Once again, recycled pasta boxes, some paint, stickers, rocks, wax sticks, markers and hot glue, we had our own kids' made wonder with princess Ametis (made out of clay) sitting in her throne and enjoying the green beauty around her.

The piano top is becoming a place for the older girls to store their hand made projects so that the younger siblings won't be able to get them and try to play with them.

My favorite part in the project making is seeing how the girls are learning to handle the hot glue gun, freeing me a lot, as they can really make things the way they like it, to watch them play with their creations during the day, and, also, to call the grandparents on skype and ask them what that thing we were showing them was.