Day 34: A working Roman Aqueduct

As you all know, Coqui LOVES History. He just soaks it all up and wants to do any hands-on craft you can think of, so History does come alive in our house quite a bit. After doing the Greeks and some India and China study, we are now fully engaged in our Ancient Rome unit. One of the crafts recommended by the Story of the World book is building a Roman aqueduct. So I researched the internet for some ideas. I wanted to build one that is working, but I also did not want to spend weeks on assembling it. Today was a great day to start this project as it was cold and rainy outside.

We used the template provided by the book, copied it, and then traced it onto cardboard. I cut it out with a knife. Then we build the top, that was not provided by the book, but we needed to connect those two arch pieces. Our source is a water bottle cut open on the top, and filled with rocks as space filler, so we don't have to use so much water for it to reach the intake of the aqueduct. We also needed a 'well' for the water to be collected after it's travel, so we used a small yogurt cup. The water line is a straw, cover on the top to make it more real. We connected everything with glue or duct tape. Eventually, Coqui got to work in covering some parts with clay, to make it look like a landscape. At the end, he painted it all. Et voila, our aqueduct was finished already. It took us maybe two hours. It is still drying now, but we got to try it out before we put it to the side. Daddy was quite impressed how we spend our Sunday afternoon.