For the past few months, our history studies have focused on Ancient Greece. We read some great books and tales and had some fun along the way.
Books We Read:
Story of the Greeks by Guerber, published by Nothing New Press
Usborne’s Ancient World
A City Through Time by Philip Steele
Pegasus by Marianna Mayer
D’Aulaire’s Greek Myths
Trojan Horse by Warwick Hutton
Hour of the Olympians by Mary Pope Osborne
You Wouldn’t Want to Be a Greek Athlete
The Librarian Who Measured the Earth
Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Damon Pythias and the Test of Friendship
Mary Pope Osborne’s Tales from the Odyssey (and they are making their own personal comic books based on this book)
Activities We Did:
1. We ate fig newtons (that’s totally authentic, what are you talking about?), grapes, bread & cheese
2. We held a Family Olympic Games with a Torch Run, a Rock Throwing Contest, a Long Jump Contest, and a Ball Toss.
3. After looking through Usborne’s Ancient World at the examples of pottery we saw, we created our own Greek inspired pottery using clay planting pots and black acrylic paint.
4. We made Greek costumes with thrift store pillow cases, scissors, saftey pins, ribbons, and scarfs or strips of cloth. I thought Z-urchin looked especially stately. Like a Greek politician. And my little princess like Helen of Troy.
5. We played a more modern version of an Ancient Greek version of hockey. That is to say, I read that they used to play a hockey like game, hitting a ball with sticks. So that’s what we did.
6. Finally, we learned the Greek alphabet using two YouTube videos (a Song and a Lesson) and wrote our names with Greek letters.
Then they watched Hercules on Netflix (totally inaccurate, but fun anyway- and they were excited about the red pots painting with black that were all over the movie!) and we played Seven Wonders.
Following Footprints 