Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

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Hands-On Activities

Mythological Map – Marco Polo Unit Study

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

We started our next unit study, which is Marco Polo and a study of the Mongolian Empire.

It seems like history books are sometimes focused so much on the conquest of Alexander the Great and don’t realize that Genghis Khan created an empire from China to the Adriatic Sea in Europe. Massive and impressive!

Creating a mythological map for our Marco Polo unit study was just the perfect start to exploring this empire.
I really don’t teach myth when we do history, but just introduce it to the boys.

This was such a perfect time to talk about the myths that existed in the time of Marco Polo because basically the world was unexplored.

They had parts charted like Africa and then because Marco Polo lived in Venice, he was familiar with the Mediterranean Sea and then the rest of the world was unknown.

Hands-on History: Mythological Map – Marco Polo Unit Study

Some of the mapmakers would put warning signs on maps and fill them with mythological creatures because the land was uncharted territory and they thought the rest of the world was filled with dragons and such.

Of course Tiny thought this was way beyond cool and I found the activity to create a mythological map in the book Marco Polo for Kids: His Marvelous Journey to China, 21 Activities (For Kids series) which sparked our creativity.

Look at this short list of materials needed to create this fun and aged map.

  • Paper size of your choice. We had regular old paper.
  • Permanent Marker
  • Coffee and coffee grounds
  • here.

Have those things in your house?

Another reason why this is such a fun project is that there was very little known of the world and so most of the map can be made up from imagination.
A short geography project is a win-win. No moaning when mapping out mythological and unexplored areas.

Tiny just drew Africa, labeled the Mediterranean Sea and filled in the rest with creatures and monsters and added in his own warning.

I grabbed some left over coffee and a soft rag.

Next, he crumpled up the page and wadded it up real good (he loved that part) and laid it back out again. This helps it to look worn.

The coffee grounds were a must too.

He add in a few of those over some holes he made on the map and it started to take shape. We both wished he had added a bit more coffee grounds over it to mimic aged spots.

Then he took his soft rag and used the old coffee to soak  the map.

Be careful to not tear the page, though you do want some of the edges torn. Add a few torn edges.

Then I stuck it in the oven on the lowest heat and dried it for about 5 minutes.  Take it out and be careful because now you have an old and brittle map.

Here are a couple of other books, we have for this unit study too that we will be using.

We can’t wait to do our next hands-on activity and oh yes, I have printables coming on this unit study too! Have you studied about Marco Polo yet?

Hugs and love ya,

Marco Polo Unit Study, Lapbook, and Hands-on Ideas

Also check out:

Easy Hands on Homeschooling Ideas When You’re Not the Bomb Mom

Hands-on History Activities for Learning about Ancient Civilizations

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

You’ll love these hands on history ancient civilizations activities. Also, you’ll love my pages Ancient Civilizations and Ancient Civilization II.

Many things we use today come from the powerful empires of the past, but ancient history can sometimes be a challenge when teaching our kids.

Making a connection to the past through hands-on learning helps a child to not only remember what he has learned, but helps him to develop critical thinking skills. By doing this instead of just memorizing, a child interacts with the past and this cements learning. CLICK here to grab an idea or two for Hands-on History Activities for Kids for Learning about Ancient Civilization!!

Making a connection to the past through hands-on learning helps a child to not only remember what he has learned but helps him to develop critical thinking skills. 

By doing this instead of just memorizing, a child interacts with the past and this cements learning.

HANDS-ON HISTORY CONNECTING TO THE PAST

Do not feel intimidated either if you are not the crafty artsy type of person because hands-on history activities for learning about ancient civilizations do not have to be complicated.

Grab a few of these ideas.

 Mesopotamia

mesopotamia alphabet

Draw the ABC’s of Mesopotamia.This is just way too cool and it’s a language arts lesson too.

The pictures are water color pencil with marker outline.

Carve a cuneiform cylinder seal using clay or play the royal game of Ur.

cuneiform-cylinder-seals-slide      Game of Ur
{source}                                      {source}
Draw a ziggurat or build a ziggurat and hut.

And I love this hands-on geography, history and map curriculum I used because it fits hands-on learning at any age!

ziggurat-drawing    hut
{source}                                                     {source}

Include some easy notebooking about Ancient Sumeria.

The Indus Valley

(Modern Day Pakistan)

Do a connect the dots of Mohenjo-Daro or build the city of Mohenjo-Daro.

Mohenjo_Daro_connect_dots
Mohenjo-Daro

Ancient China

Grab these paper dolls or make some terracotta warriors.

china
soldiers

Build a pagoda or make Ming plates.

build-a-pagoda-slide    MingPlates1
{source}                                             {source}

Also, we love, love the activities from Home School in the Woods.

Hands-on History Activities for Learning about Ancient Civilizations

Read here about the hands-on activities for 14 great empires or you can look at the guide we used.

Phoencia

(Modern day Lebanon)

Ancient Phoenicia Craft Roundup

Check out my post about making a boat, creating some purple dye or learning the Phoenician alphabet.

Hands on History Ancient Civilizations Activities

Next, here are more hands-on history ancient civilizations activities.

Assyria and Ancient Babylon

(Modern day Iraq or northern part of Mesopotamia)

Be sure to check out how to teach history in 14 lessons. You’ll love this curriculum if you need to teach history in broad strokes!


Also, read Why I Love and Use BrimWood Press History here.

And here is my hanging gardens of Babylon craft.

        hanging gardens of babylon
                                               

Ancient Greece

Create a playscape or ancient world and have a Greek feast.

greekworld    greek-feast
{source}                                                 {source}

Play a Greek mythology matching card game or make a Grecian urn.

Greek Mythology Matching Game_General    grecian urn
{source}                                        {source}

Do a paper model of the Parthenon or make an ancient Greek water clock.

paper-parthenon_clip_image002    How to Make a Water Clock
                                                           

Ancient Egypt

 Use a shoebox to make a mini Egyptian Sarcophagus or mummify a rubber chicken.

king-tut-sarcophagus-
rubber chicken

   

Go from paper plate to creating an Egyptian collar or make a minibook printable on the Pharaohs crown using this free .pdf.

from paperplate to egyptian necklace    double crown
                                                          

Include a sugar cube pyramid, cookie map or make yummy mummy hot dogs or make papyrus.

Ancient-Egypt-Activities--1024x1024   papyrus
                                                                         {source}

Grab the Ancient Egyptian printable game I created or grab this free printable maze.Ancient-Egypt-Collage-Snake-Game-        akhenaten-maze-m
                                                                                    {source}

Ancient Rome

Make a styrofoam Colosseum or dig for the city of Pompeii.

the-colosseum        Digging-up-Pompeii
{source}                                          {source}

Make an easy peazy Roman costume or build an Roman aqueduct.

How to Make an Easy Peazy Roman Costume    aqueduct

Make an easy Roman mosaic.

mosaics

{source}

Hands-on History Activities for Learning about Ancient Civilizations

And don’t forget, I created a lapbook about Ancient Civilizations. It is more like an overview on them.

Do you see anything to get you your kids inspired about learning about the Ancient Civilizations while keeping history hands-on?|

Cherokee Garden Pan Bread

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Excited to add a hands-on activity to go along with our Trail of Tears Unit Study and because we haven’t baked anything even slightly sweet yet at the high altitude we now live in, we thought we would make Cherokee Garden Pan Bread.

Cherokee Garden Pan Bread

First though, here is a bit of background information about the Cherokee that we read about in one of our recipe books.

The Cherokee lived in large villages in southeastern North America.

Each village consisted of about 30 to 60 houses that surrounded a large meeting building.

Each dome shaped house had a wattle frame, which was woven from woven twigs and branches.They covered the frame with mud or clay paste called daub.
Cherokee ate both garden foods and wild plants. Corns, beans, squash, and wild yams grew in the Cherokees’ large gardens.

Woman collected raspberries, strawberries, cranberries, blackberries, and gooseberries.   They also gathered walnuts, hickory nuts and pecans from surrounding forests.

They ground seeds, nuts and corn into meal with a hollowed out log, called a mortar and a coarse stick.

This recipe uses a lot of the ingredients that they would have had on hand then.  By the way, because sometimes I do forget to share where I get some of my ideas from,  I wanted to be sure you knew about these series of books that I love.

They are called Exploring History Through Simple Recipes and there are several cool books in this oldie, but goodie series.

This one is called American Indian Cooking before 1500.

One more thing before I share how easy Tiny whipped this up, but we made a few substitutions.

Though there is pumpkin here in Cuenca, Ecuador there is not canned pumpkin.  So I used what we had on hand, which was apples as a substitute.

Garden Pan Bread IngredientsStep 1 Measuring

So here is your cast of characters in Spanish no doubt.

We are all trying to learn to read Spanish, but here are the basic ingredients: whole wheat flour, cornmeal, walnuts, raisins and then of course apples.

First, Tiny combined the dry ingredients.  We did omit the baking powder too as we are tweaking recipes a bit to bake at high altitudes.

If you are at sea level, keep the recipe just like I have it printed above.

Step 2 Mixing Dry IngredientsStep 3 Preparing Wet Ingredients

After mixing the dry ingredients (except for the walnuts and raisins) we grabbed a second bowl to mix the wet ingredients.   I grated the apples to add to the mixture to substitute for the pumpkin.

Again, I had to play with the recipe a bit because I know it requires more liquid too when we bake here in the mountains.

So we added about another 1/4 cup of water.

Step 4 Mix IngredientsStep 5 Add a few Modern Ingredients

Then Tiny combine the wet and dry ingredients.  Then we steered off course here.
We added a bit of “modern” ingredients just because we felt like it needed some sweetness.

We added a 1/2 cup of brown sugar because we had it on hand too and a pinch of vanilla extract never hurt anything.

Step 6 Add Raisins and WalnutsStep 7 Prepare for Baking

Then we folded in the raisins and walnuts.  Tiny doesn’t like walnuts, so we left them whole instead of chopping them up. He can pick them out later.

Bake at 350 degrees in a greased pan for about 30 minutes.

Again, everything takes longer to cook here, so we added another 15 minutes to the baking time.

Finished

I think Tiny and I reached the same conclusion on this bread. We would have added a bit more sugar and apple to make it sweeter.

It was pretty authentic because you could taste the cornmeal, with a hint of fruit.  I am not sure the pumpkin would have made it taste sweeter, just differently.

Overall, it was simple and plain and gave us both a taste (no pun intended) of what the Cherokee may have eaten with the ingredients they had on hand.

More Trail of Tears Activities

How to Get the Free Trail of Tears Lapbook

Now, how to grab the free lapbook. This is a subscriber freebie.

That means when you sign up to follow me, you get access to my subscribers library and this freebie.

However, not all my freebies are in the library (wink).

I like to keep up to date with what is valuable to you so I can give you more, some freebies you must sign up again on the form below even if you are already a follower.

And it’s the only way I have of freely delivering them to you. Just follow the steps below.

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Fun Winter Craft Ideas for Middle School Homeschool

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Today, I have rounded up some winter craft ideas for middle school kids. Also, look at my page Homeschool Middle School for more fun tips.

When it’s brrrrrrr outside, middle school kids still have the desire to craft, create and design.

Fun Winter Craft Ideas for Middle School Homeschool

I focused on projects or ideas for things you already have around the house and on activities that most middle school kids can do on their own.

Although all these projects don’t have a winter theme, they are all projects that can be done inside when the days are longer in doors.

Winter Craft Ideas for Middle School

Asserting independence at the middle school grades is part of the maturing process for your kids; I find that projects and crafts are great ways for a middle school kids to have some independent time away from their siblings and well, from us too.

I would find my boys working on projects in their room at odd hours of the days and wished I had collected more ideas for my oldest son during his middle school years.

Maybe one or two ideas will spark a creative bent for your middle school sweetie.

Crafts Ideas for Winter

A fun way to spend the long evening hours and to recycle magazines to make a fun and useful bowl.

Use apple peels, orange and lemon peels to make fruity scented potpourri and put it in pouches in your kid’s bedroom.

Check out the recycled magazine vessels.

{attribution: Art is What I Teach} 
{attribution: Education Dot Com }

Oh my goodness, I remember doing something like this in my art class in 7th grade.  It is pendulum painting.

Of course, mine didn’t look near as good as this.

I never was talented at art, but I always showed up at class ready to create another not so inspiring creation.

With this project, you could easily incorporate a bit of science too.


pendulum-painting2-mslb7109_vert

{attribution: Martha Stewart}

Recycling CDs with yarn is a fun way to learn about weaving. 

Whatever the age your kids are even middle school kids love to have fun still with snow and ice.

The Basement Workshop Store

Crafts Ideas for Homeschool

Look at making these fun ice balloons.

Crafts don’t always have to be educational, just inspirational to invoke the imagination.

{attribution: Make It a Wonderful Life}  
{attribution: Education Dot Com}
{attribution: Handmade Charlotte}

I have done several letter collages for parties, but this is such a fun idea for middle school kids to make letters from vintage comic books.


Not too babyish so my kids can enjoy a bit of art in their room too.

I am absolutely in awe of this Dale Chihuly inspired chandelier created by middleschoolers. 

Though it looks like they used a complicated process, this is simply regular plastic drinking cups and permanent markers. 

Middle School Crafts

{attribution: Calvert Canvas}

Then they melted the cups in the toaster oven.

Unbelievable, how beautiful and easy this art project is.

You may need to supervise this project a bit since the toaster oven is involved unless you have a kid that has been cooking for a while.

This hands-on idea inspired my unit study and lapbook on glassblowing.

Glass Blowing Lapbook Glass Blowing

Moreover, just in case you live in a place like I do where snow is non-existent, check out how to make Borax crystals icicles for kids and look here for a fun snowflake craft with borax.

Using tempera paint and charcoal your middle school kids can create winter landscapes.

This makes for beautiful art to keep through the years.

And use this fun easy salt and watercolor ingredients to do a beautiful winter art project. So easy.

If you have a fan of The Hunger Games, check out 21 Craft Ideas for The Hunger Games.

{attribution: A Faithful Attempt}
{attribution: Everything Etsy}

Fun Winter Ideas for Middle School

Though this next website, Library Arts, is more about explaining what type of teen programs they offer for middle school arts, it has a plethora of ideas for hands-on activities.

Maybe you will be able to grab an idea or two.

Winter NaturExplorers 1080x1080 (Instagram)

They now have activities divided by age, so even your young kids can be inspired.

_wsb_500x374_Project 19_wsb_419x737_Mixed Button Necklace_wsb_500x411_Sweet Sugar ScrubOutdoor sun catcher
{attribution: Library Arts}

More Homeschooling in Middle School Resources

In addition, don’t forget, I have a unit study and lapbook on The Arctic and The Inuit. 

Winter time is a great time to study about how the Inuit lived and you love my Arctic and Inuit Lapbook.

I have some easy hands-on idea too.

Inuit Lapbook

Also, art is one activity you can do anytime of the year, but when it’s cold outside keep learning fun indoors by doing Art History.

Add Art History To Your Homeschool… Effortlessly!

Take your art studies from occasional crafts to intentional art appreciation and invite your kids to make open-ended art inspired by famous artists from the past.

It’s easier than you think and this guide will show you how to get started quickly… even if you’ve never taken an art class in your life!

You’ll learn:

  • Why art history should be one of your core subjects and not an ‘elective’ or an ‘extra’
  • How to make art more meaningful and curate a custom experience that will meet your kids where they are right now
  • What art supplies and books you’ll need to get your art area ready for ‘back to homeschool’
  • Who to study first (and you’ll get a full-length open-and-go study guide so you can begin today!)

Meaningful art lessons don’t need to be super time consuming or elaborate to be impactful and inspiring. Get your free starter kit and study guide today and start making creative memories with your kids!

Winter Craft Ideas for Middle School

Maybe one of these ideas will add a touch of creativity to your cold winter days.

I think you’ll love these other ideas:

Hugs and love ya,

Winter Craft Ideas for Middle School

100 BEST Hands-on Free Native American Resources

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Today I have a round up of 100 free Native American resources. Too, you’ll love my page Native American Unit Study for Kids Who Love Hands-on Learning.

We are fascinated with learning about so many different regions of the Native Americans as well as their proud past, fascinating hands-on activities, and understanding their language.

I have divided this page by learning category to make it easier for you to locate the kind of activity you are looking to do.

100 BEST Hands-on Free Native American Resources

Check out my round up and I hope a few of these ideas spark a creative touch for you when it comes to learning about Native Americans.

Native American Arts, Crafts, and Activities

There’s no doubt that much of the focus on doing a Native American unit study should be hands-on activities. This round up of arts, crafts, and activities covers a bit for each age.

 Also, you’ll love these other unit studies to go with this study of the Native Americans. The NaturExplorers science series are for multiple ages and gives you several topics to choose from. We loved the the fruits and nuts.

Our Journey Westward

In addition, you’ll love these books about Native Americans. Some are about the Trail of Tears and a few others we loved.

 Books About Native Americans

Books About the Trail of Tears

Furthermore incorporating a living books approach to geography by Beautiful Feet brings learning about this time period alive.

You’ll love this learning Geography through Literature approach when learning about Native Americans.

Furthermore, adding a few clip art sources and some coloring pages allows you to add these resources for a unit study or just as enrichment in your study.

Clip Art about Native Americans

Native American Coloring Pages

Native American Dioramas

Then have you seen this unit study at Home School in the Woods?

This unit study that would compliment the Native American unit and it is a Colonial Unit Study and Lapbook over at Home School in the Woods which is one our favorite hands-on history programs.

Native American Lapbooks

Our Journey Westward

Too, I have included some lesson plans below in case you want to study another topic or use it for a jumping off point.

 Native American Lesson Plans

HOW TO EASILY BRING HISTORY ALIVE

Also, coloring is an easy way to bring any subject alive. You may love history coloring pages.

Here is what the 10 page download contains.

I put a few key words to explain each picture on the page. This way you can use the coloring pages as title pages too.

Page 3:  Native American on horseback,
4: Lewis and Clark Trek,
5: Lewis and Clark and The Piegan,
6: Lewis and Clark Exploring Rivers,
7: The Plains Indians,
8: Pioneer Life,
9: Moving West, 10: Westward Ho,
11: Settlers, and
12: Fur Trappers and Mountainmen

Grab your fun copy below!

Science, Sign Language, Folks Tales, & MORE!

Native American Printables for Kids

Native Americans Recipes

Teacher’s Guides For Studying Native Americans

Native American Unit Studies

You Tube, Media, Interactive

What do you think?  I think I will keep adding to this growing list as I discover new gems for studying about Native Americans.

This blog hop is organized by iHomeschool Network, a collaboration of outstanding homeschool bloggers who connect with each other and with family-friendly companies in mutual beneficial projects. Click the image below to visit all the other blog articles from the homeschool moms of the iHomeschool Network.

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