When we made the decision to homeschool, I immediately knew we would use, among other things, books and teacher's guides from Beautiful Feet Books. During the brief time I homeschooled Clare last school year, we used the Geography through Literature Pack from Beautiful Feet Books and it was our favorite things to work on each day.
This year, we began to work through the Ancient History Literature Pack from B.F. Books. Literature packs contain novels relevant to the time period and geographical locations as well as a teacher's guide that sets out a reading plan along with suggested projects, mapping assignments and other recommended activities. For Ancient History, the teacher's guide includes Old Testament readings that correspond with other world events about which you are learning. The literature pack also includes an Ancient History Encyclopedia that provides more detailed information about the subject matter.
We have completed the first section of the Ancient History pack, which is on Sumer and Mesopotamia. For this section, we read the novel The Golden Bull by Marjorie Cowley. This story brought Ancient Ur alive for my girls as we read a few chapters aloud together each school day. Even five-year-old Anne, who was permitted to wander in and out of the room as she wanted, enjoyed the story and joined in the discussions about the story with us.
One of the recommended activities for this section was making cuneiform tablet cookies. We used our new favorite cut-out cookie recipe found here. After cutting out tablet-like shapes, the girls used kabob sticks to carve cuneiform, the writing developed by the people of Sumer.
This year, we began to work through the Ancient History Literature Pack from B.F. Books. Literature packs contain novels relevant to the time period and geographical locations as well as a teacher's guide that sets out a reading plan along with suggested projects, mapping assignments and other recommended activities. For Ancient History, the teacher's guide includes Old Testament readings that correspond with other world events about which you are learning. The literature pack also includes an Ancient History Encyclopedia that provides more detailed information about the subject matter.
We have completed the first section of the Ancient History pack, which is on Sumer and Mesopotamia. For this section, we read the novel The Golden Bull by Marjorie Cowley. This story brought Ancient Ur alive for my girls as we read a few chapters aloud together each school day. Even five-year-old Anne, who was permitted to wander in and out of the room as she wanted, enjoyed the story and joined in the discussions about the story with us.
One of the recommended activities for this section was making cuneiform tablet cookies. We used our new favorite cut-out cookie recipe found here. After cutting out tablet-like shapes, the girls used kabob sticks to carve cuneiform, the writing developed by the people of Sumer.
We also enjoyed making clay cylinder seals. This is a recommended activity in the Ancient History teacher's guide, but I found the most helpful information for making cylinder seals at artclasscurator.com. This site even recommended the best brand of clay, because it is packaged in the necessary shape.
Cylinder seals were carved cylinders that could be rolled onto wet clay to essentially make a stamp. Mixing her ancient cultures a bit, Clare decided to use her cylinder seal to tell the story of Arachne--a character from Greek mythology. These pictures show her cylinder as well as the result of pressing the cylinder on playdough.
Cylinder seals were carved cylinders that could be rolled onto wet clay to essentially make a stamp. Mixing her ancient cultures a bit, Clare decided to use her cylinder seal to tell the story of Arachne--a character from Greek mythology. These pictures show her cylinder as well as the result of pressing the cylinder on playdough.
We have now moved on to Ancient Egypt in our Ancient History Literature Pack. We have a lot of fun projects ahead of us. We will also be working in some Pilgrim history for the month of November, so I don't know how much that will slow us down in our study of Ancient History. Regardless of the time period, we'll keep making history hands-on and fun.
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