Mythology and the Fourth Grade

This past week has been a crazy one.  From teaching the students about fractions, to having them take the SBAC math ad reading tests on the laptops, it all became a lot to handle.  With all of the crazyness going on, one of the best moments came when I  introduced mythology to my class.  Believe it or not, this allowed for some comic relief between the kids and I, and we all needed it.  This is my second year teaching mythology, but last year was kind of a whirlwind because of all the changes with the Common Core.  This year we acquired some really great mentor texts!  The book that I selected to read to the class first was great because it talked about the purpose of mythology, and began with the story of how the mythological world was created with the Greek gods and goddesses.  The comic relief came when I began to read the story about Gaea, who was mother Earth and the goddess of the early Greek gods,  and Uranus, the god of the sky.  Gaea and Uranus had some children, and some of them turned out to by cyclopes and monsters with 50 arms and 50 legs.  Uranus banished those children to the underworld, but Gaea was not happy about that.  Gaea encouraged her other son Cronus to rescue his brothers, but he left his brothers down in the underworld and took over his dad, Uranus, and banished him from Earth.  Now the part that gets interesting is that Cronus ends up marrying one of his sisters.  My students were very confused and disgusted by this, but after reassuring them that this is a fictional story, they were able to laugh about it.  I was new to this story, so I did not see that one coming.  Then, the story goes on to say that Cronus ate his children because he did not want them to overpower him, like what he did to his dad.  In the end Cronus's children ended up living, and they defeated their father in a battle.  I think my students were relieved by this! I can't wait until the next Greek myth!