Ancient Greece, 2010

My girls had a great time making a Power Point presentation at the end of their unit on Ancient Greece. I have tried several things, but have not been able to put the Power Point on this blog! So I’ll just try to outline what we did.

Week 1

*The art and ideas of the Greeks are still all around us today (art, architecture, science, mathematics, government).
--Watch video: Athens and Ancient Greece (overview of Greek geography and what the ruins looked like in ancient times)
--Brainstorm ideas for a list of things we got “From Ancient Greece”
--Watch video: Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land (first part—talking about Greek use of the golden mean in architecture, geometry, music)

--Make a map of Greece, with names of major islands

*The stories of the heroes are considered the beginning of the history of Greece.
--Watch video The Aegean from Time Life's Lost Civilizations series
--Read an overview of Greek gods and goddesses in D’Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths.
--Do crossword puzzle or matching game (Greenleaf Guide to Ancient Greece)

--Read aloud The Golden Fleece: And the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles by Padraic Colum
vocabulary: protean, arachnid, lyric

Week 2—Trojan War
--Read The Children’s Homer: The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy by Padraic Colum

--Make model Trojan horse (while Mom reads).
--Read Aeschelus’ play Electra. (This was remarkably short. We took parts and read aloud. This also led to a discussion about Greek drama--masks, chorus, etc.)

Week 3—City States
--read aloud Theras and His Town by Caroline Dale Snedeker. (This is a fictional account of a boy who lives in Athens then moves to Sparta.)

--Watch Ancient Greece from Time Life’s Lost Civilizations series

--read aloud Plutarch’s Lives—Cimon, Pericles
--Report on Lycurgus, Draco, Solon, Pisistratus

--Watch The First Olympics: Athens 1896

--Add people & events to timeline/century books.
vocabulary: trireme, draconian, solon, democracy, hygiene

Week 4--Wars
--Mom tell about the Persian Wars (490-479), using pictures from textbook.

(This included Battle of Marathon, Darius I (522-486), Militiades, Pheidippides, Xerxes I (486-465), Themistocles, Battle of Salamis, Aristides the Just.)
--Read aloud Leonidas, Hero of Thermopolae.

--Mom tell about the Delian League and the Peloponnesian War (431-404)
--Add people & events to timeline/century books.

Week 5

--Read aloud The Last Days of Socrates (selected sections) by Plato.

--Report on philosphers--Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Diogenes
--Read aloud Archimedes and the Door of Science by Jeanne Bendick (and try out some of the math stuff!).

Week 6

--Read aloud Alexander the Great by John Gunther

THEN make a Power Point presentation about all of it!

(L and N did a great job--with music and lots of special effects.)