Posted by Cindy on September 15, 2010
We are absolutely LOVING Ancient Civilizations and the Bible by Diana Waring! There is SO much to choose from for every single learning style. We’re only skimming the surface of the depth that could be reached with this curriculum, and we’re still diving way deep into Biblical world history!
Here are some photos from our first unit culminating projects based on Creation and the flood. At the end of each unit, Diana Waring has included a huge variety of project ideas. Your children choose whatever most floats their boat as far as topic and learning style. This time around, Mahayla chose to create a poster of the lineage of the Seed line up to the point of Noah and a demonstration with research about the effects of the world-wide flood.
Caleb chose to rewrite Genesis 1 and 2 in the form of a comical puppet show.
I haven’t even included pictures of the mapping, timeline, vocabulary work, poster projects and artist study we did! I may put up another post of those soon, but more likely I’ll wait and try to include those in a unit 2 wrap-up.
Until now, I’ve never found a single curriculum that I haven’t had to add to in some way or another to make it exactly what I was hoping for. This is even more perfect than I had imagined!
Side note: I’ve had several people ask me about the age appropriateness of this program. I’m using it with an 8th grader and 5th grader. The 5th grader is a tad bored once in a while when we get into more technical or drawn out readings or discussion. That’s when I pull out the activities from the younger student activity guide. To really get the full benefit from everything available in the curriculum, I’d say it’s most appropriate for 7th or 8th and higher. I don’t have any regrets bringing the 5th grader along, but there are just some of the fascinating learning opportunities that are flying over top of him right now. On his own upper elementary level, though, he’s gaining a ton from the study, too! If you have the option, I’m just saying that I think waiting until upper middle and high school is better. Hey, it can count for a world history credit if you wait!
Posted by Cindy on October 23, 2007
Last week we wrapped up a very fun Ancient History unit. After learning what history is, we spent about a week on each of the following civilizations: Ancient Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Israel, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Ancient China and Ancient Aztecs.
This past week, I asked them each to choose the civilization that was their favorite and create a presentation about it. They could choose to present their information any way they liked and we video taped them.
Mahayla created a poster with information about various aspects of the Ancient Greek lifestyle. She made a discus, drew a wonderful picture of a horse and chariot, set up a book for a visual and dressed in a Greek fashion of the time. She really took this project seriously and made a great presentation. 
) (Sorry for the dark pictures. I keep saying we need a new camera and I really mean it!)
Caleb also created a poster, but his was mostly pictures he (we) found on the internet that he labeled. He made a clay model of the Geat Wall of China, dressed in a robe and served us hot tea. I thought it was excellent for his first-ever presentation like this.
I really liked doing an end of the unit project and I think the kids did, too. I think we’ll make these part of each unit this year. Here are a few pictures of the notebooks we worked on throughout the unit.
Next stop: Space!
Posted by Cindy on September 7, 2007
Studying Ancient Greece has been so much fun! We could’ve spent many more days lingering in the Greek hillsides, but it’s time to move on to Ancient Rome. Here are some highlights from our week.
On top of the regular reading about Ancient Greece, map work, timelines and such, we did lots of hands-on activities, too. My kids gain so much more from the “exciting stuff”.
The philosopher Aristotle is known as the father of the scientific method. Thanks to JoAnn, we had a really fun and simple activity that taught the scientific method.
The Story of the World, Activity Book 1 had a really fun sticker making project. We colored Greek symbols, then made our own sticker solution to paint on the back of the symbols. After it dried, all we had to do was lick and stick!
The kids made happy and sad drama masks and created their own play.
Math one day was spent finding patterns for square numbers, triangular numbers, oblong numbers, and gnomon. My worksheets came from a Ancient Greece Thematic Unit
by Teacher Created Materials. You can probably do a quick search on the web for some free worksheets. I bought my book for a quarter at a homeschool sale. I wouldn’t recommend buying it unless you can find it as cheap as I did. Almost all the activities seemed to center around the gods and goddesses of Ancient Greece. That’s not something I wanted our family to focus on. But, I did find a few things worth adding to the unit, so my quarter wasn’t wasted! 
And we made Baklava. Yummy!
Posted by Cindy on August 25, 2007
We’re on a tour of ancient history right now and loving it! So far we’ve been through Ancient Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. I thought I’d share a few highlights of this week in Egypt since we had so much fun.
The best part of the week was mummifying a Ken doll. Thanks Jamin for the idea! Go to her post here for a full set of directions. We prepared herbed oils earlier in the week and made the mummies as our final project on Friday.
Any spice covered with oil. Shake everyday for a week.
Our poor Pharaoh before he realized death was imminent.
The project really didn’t take that long. What a memory!
We also enjoyed Sanyet Batates (which is basically a meat and potato stew) and unleavened bread.
To get in the real spirit of things, Mahayla dressed up in an Egyptian princess outfit.
Later, Mahayla came to me and said, “Look, Mom, Spider Man had a baby!” I suppose Caleb decided dressing up looked like fun. Hmmm….I don’t remember Spider Man in any of our Ancient Egyptian readings.
