As we go through our history book, I will occasionally take a break and add in a mini unit study–kind of like a history commercial break. Other times I will have my son do a more in-depth study on the historical topic currently being covered.
With our Ancient Greece Unit Study and our Ancient Egypt Study (coming in the next post), we decided to take a historical commercial break from our curriculum.
Greece.
We have looked into this country in the past, but in doing an in-depth study of Ancient Greece, we learned quite a bit that applies to today. For example, some architecture of today is patterned after Greek architecture. Part of the Hippocratic Oath is used by doctors today and was formulated by a Greek. The Pythagorean theorem is still used in math and was created by a Greek as well.
I collected some free downloads to make an Ancient Greek workbook. I love binding items with my new binder! My son enjoyed putting it together. I have added links to the pages we used at the end of this post.
We also made a trip to the library to find as many books as we could about Greece and Ancient Greece. I would encourage you to go to your local library for some great books!
For the literature part of our study, I decided to have my son read Homer’s books The Odyssey and The Iliad. He read the junior level books. These are a fun read.
Here are the books we used from our library:
- Cultures of the World: Greece published by Cavendish Square ISBN 978-1-60870-869-7
- A Greek Temple authors Fiona MacDonald and Mark Bergin
- Greek Hero authors Mick Manning and Brita Granstom
- Troy: Unearthing Ancient Worlds author Ann Kerns
- Early Peoples: Ancient Greeks published by World Book ISBN 978-0-7166-2130-0
- The Greek News authors Anton Powell and Philip Steele
I always like to add a biblical perspective into all of our studies. In this case, we included the story of Paul’s Journey to Greece when he spoke on Mars Hill at the “Unknown god” podium the Greeks had set up next to their other gods. To see how God worked in the people’s lives through the preaching of Paul of the true God was inspiring! Putting biblical history into the historical timeline really makes God’s Word more real to children. I must admit, seeing it come together as an adult just solidifies His Word in my own life.
We studied all aspects of the ancient Greek life:
- Timeline: We compared historical timeline to biblical timeline.
- Greek daily life
- Greek City-States and government
- Architecture
- The Agora (town center)
- Famous Greeks in areas of art, science, math, and philosophy
- Famous literature works: Aesop’s fables, The Iliad, and The Odyssey
- Pythagoras Theorem
- Constellations and Zodiac
- Greek Food
- Greek Alphabet
- Education differences between Sparta children and Athenian children
- Pottery
- Trojan War
- Warships
- Different types of soldiers
- Ancient Greek map compared to current Greece
- Early Olympics
- Paul’s Journey to Greece
- Greek Myths and gods
My son did two projects for this study. He made a Trojan horse replica and an clay oil lamp.
Here is a list of downloads and sites that we used:
- Trojan horse project Bookshark.com
- Free Ancient Greece Lap Book inserts Homeschool Share
- Ancient Greek Famous people cards freebie Researchparent.com
- Zodiac Constellation Card set with a secular and biblical reference my teachers pay teacher shop
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