history

Hands-on History Activities for Learning about Ancient Civilizations

December 26, 2014 | 6 Comments
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.

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

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.

{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!

{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.

Ancient China

Grab these paper dolls or make some terracotta warriors.

Build a pagoda or make Ming plates.

{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 l ook at the guide we used.

Phoencia

(Modern day Lebanon)

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.

Ancient Greece

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

{source} {source}

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

{source} {source}

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

Ancient Egypt

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

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

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

{source}

Grab the Ancient Egyptian printable game I created or grab this free printable maze.
{source}

Ancient Rome

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

{source} {source}

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

Make an easy Roman mosaic.

{source}

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?|

30 Fun Resources for Learning About Daniel Boone

July 13, 2014 | 9 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Today, I have rounded up 30 fun resources for learning about Daniel Boone. He straddles quite a few epoch time periods in American history.

Learning About Daniel Boone

Planning on updating more of my unit studies, even though being patient is not part of my personality, I hope to slowly share them with you throughout the year.

Look below at these ideas for studying about Daniel Boone and about the colonial and frontier time periods.

Language Arts Ideas for Learning About Daniel Boone

Read this short story Daniel Boone’s Dear from American Folklore. Use it to write a longer story or rewrite it. Read the Obituary on Daniel Boone and describe an American Folk Hero.

Copywork. Grab some quotes from here about Daniel Boone for copywork.

Also, look at these classroom activities.

Life During the Colonial Period and on The Frontier During the Life of Daniel Boone

Daniel Boone’s father was a blacksmith. Download a free .pdf which lists the different jobs during the colonial period. Also, learn about the food eaten during the colonial period.

Too, grab a huge 205 page free download about Women on the Frontier.

I have not read all the way through it, but it has some great pictures and stories. Sometimes in teaching my sons about explorers, I overlook just how resourceful woman had to be too. This .pdf is a nice reminder full of stories.

Free printable lesson plan about the frontier and frontier life.

Free lesson plan for directions on making a colonial recipe, an activity for quilting and dyeing fabrics with household fruits and vegetables.

You’ll love learning more about American History with these fun hands-on units from Home School in The Woods.

Geography Ideas for Studying About Daniel Boone.

Research the history of Pennsylvania.
Research about the Appalachian Mountains. Read about the Appalachian Mountains here in the free .pdf publication.

Research the history of the state of Kentucky. Print a map here about Kentucky.

Free Maps of the Cumberland Gap Area/Wilderness Road.

Wilderness Survival Skills

Next, you can’t lean about Daniel Boone without learning about wilderness survival skills. Watch this YouTube video about How to Navigate the Wilderness. Also, look at Fire Starting with Sticks.

Learn about how to tan deer hides and small fur skins.

Too, download this Wilderness Survival workbook. And this fun freebie too which is Outside Survival.

Events During the Life of Daniel Boone

And if you want to learn about the colonial period you’ll love this fun hands-on resource from Home School in the Woods.

In 1755, Daniel Boone went to fight in the French and Indian War. You’ll love my French and Indian War lapbook.

Also, he also lived through the American Revolutionary War.

Grab my free American Revolution War lapbook.

Hands-On Activities for Learning About Daniel Boone

How to Build a Fort Build a Fort — *(Pic. attribution:* *megahowto*)

Build a Fort. Really cool project for those that take their fort building serious.

Next, make a fringed hunting shirt. It is important to be sure we teach our kids accurate clothing of the time period.

So this site, N. Hurst Historic Tailoring, has a very helpful .pdf with pictures that explains how it was done. Click on Fringe on the American Hunting Shirt pdf.

Also as shown from the picture above, you can make an easy fringed shirt. In addition, look at this site to show the large lapels on Daniel Boone’s clothing. Lots of good pictures here to show time period clothing and their history.

Play games children would have played while living on the frontier.

How to build a log cabin diorama– YouTube video.

Grab a free minibook at Practical Pages. Nadene has a page about a spinning wheel to describe the steps on how to spin.

Media about Daniel Boone

History of the Early American West – The Frontier (part 1) YouTube. Here is the description: In this mini-documentary, historian Darren R. Reid (University of Edinburgh) explores the development of the frontier in the years leading up to the American Revolution. From Daniel Boone’s exploration of Kentucky in 1769 to the outbreak of Dunmore’s War in 1774, this video is the perfect introduction to the early American west.

A History of the Early American West – The Frontier (part 2) Time: 10:41

Watch National Geographic: Appalachian Trail on Netflix. 50 minutes. “National Geographic straps on the boots to explore the splendors of the Appalachian Trail, the longest marked trail in the United States.”

Books and Fun Resources To Learn About Daniel Boone

Then, you’ll love these books and fun resources to round out your study about the life of Daniel Boone.

Finally, we loved learning so much about Daniel Boone that I created a lapbook.

Also, you may love these other fun resources:

Hugs and love ya,

When We Used Story of the World as our History Spine

June 23, 2014 | Leave a Comment
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

When we used The Story of the World as our history spine in the younger years, it was one right choice I made for us.

Although loving history, my knowledge included only the history of the United States and it was pretty lame at that.

Because the The Story of the World came out around the time my oldest son was in the early grades and because I had read numerous good reviews, I used it.

It ended up being a perfect fit for all of my sons. We did begin with Volume 1 and worked our way through Volume 4, which is the whole series.

When we used The Story of the World as our History Spine

It is hard to find history programs for very young children that are presented in a story format and that make teaching history to young children easy. That is one thing I appreciated about the format.

I think it’s a must to have not only the story book, but the Teacher’s Manual which has the activity pages in them or purchase the activity pages separately for each kid.

STORY OF THE WORLD AS A HISTORY SPINE

The teacher’s manual not only has questions that help you to review the story but it has the answers right there too. No flipping to another section to find the answers That is a huge tiny pet peeve of mine about teacher’s manual.

Also, there are plenty of resources listed and choices for extra reading for a variety of ages.

It is a multi-age resource, which is a great find too if you are teaching more than one child.

If you are new to homeschooling or if you don’t have a huge background in history, The Story of the World makes teaching history painless. It would make a great addition to your curriculum too even if your kids are a bit older.

If your oldest kid is beginning middle school, I think this curriculum is still doable to teach all your kids if you have that circumstance.

Volume 4 is targeted for grades 4 to 8. So if you have children in that age range and want to use this, just remember that Volume 1 was written for 1st to 4th grade. I don’t see any harm in using it for your kids if they are older and can tolerate a bit of the language written in the earlier volumes for younger children. It sure helps the teacher mom along.

The Story of the World is just an introduction to history and I think it does a fantastic job of hooking your children on history along with the maps and activities laid out in the program. It helped us to form in our minds some major pivotal history points that the boys still refer to today.

It has slight Christian content, but we always added more. I have said before I appreciate that fact about curriculum sometimes because we can cover Bible subjects at our pace.

Overall, The Story of the World is a keeper for us because of the ease of use, story format, use for multiple ages, teacher helps and having everything laid out.

On to more history spines we used through the years in my upcoming posts.

Hugs and love ya,

Want to read more?

Review of What Every Child Needs to Know About Western Civilization by BrimWood Press.

How to Use a History Spine to Build Your Study of History

When we used Notgrass World History as our History Spine

8 Ways to Teach Homeschool History Other Than Chronologically

Should Homeschool History Be Covered in Chronological Order?

When we used Notgrass World History as our History Spine

June 10, 2014 | 6 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

When we used Notgrass World History as our history spine in 9th grade for Mr. Senior 2013, I thought I knew what I wanted at the high school level.

Sharing what worked and what didn’t work for us about some of the history spines we have used so far will hopefully help you to make a better choice for your crew.

Too, I try very hard to be objective about the pros and cons about curriculum when telling you about them. It is of more benefit to tell you about what worked and didn’t work for us and why instead of telling you what I think is a con.

Everybody has different needs at certain times and what may be a con one year may be a blessing the next year.

When we started using Notgrass Exploring World History it was our first official year of high school. Because I knew that Mr. Senior 2013 and I share a common love of history, I thought the integrated written assignments in the history curriculum was a plus feature.

I liked the fact too that it was written in a story format, similar to what we liked about living books and how we had been covering history before. Too, the history spine valued Bible history which is another plus for us.

When Mr. Senior 2013 started using it, he found it very student friendly. It had a pick up and go style that he liked and he really needed very little input from me. This was a good thing for me because as you know when teaching younger children, you want curriculum that requires less teacher prep for your older kids.

The other thing that was a draw, for me anyway, was that it included excerpts from primary sources in a book available by Notgrass called In their Words. It contains original documents, poetry, stories and hymns, which are an important element to studying world history.

However, as with some curriculum you find that after starting it, it requires more work than you want to put into it.

I really didn’t feel like we could cover Bible at a pace that suited me because the whole curriculum felt like a Bible study, which I really didn’t need. Maybe too because I have been so use to adding our own Bible content for many years, I just felt like it was a bit forced.

In addition, at that time I didn’t know what extra reading was required of him because there really wasn’t a list anywhere. The reading was folded into each lesson so unless you used the hunt and peck method, it was hard to look ahead and prepare.

Before I posted this today though, I did take a quick glance at the new edition for 2014 and it looks like they updated their curriculum. A literature list for each unit is now listed in the curriculum.

Something else I realized after getting into was that we wanted a more comprehensive language arts program or at least writing program.

Although Mr. Senior 2013 enjoyed some of the ideas for the topics for writing, he felt like he needed something that was a bit more comprehensive in explaining the mechanics of writing.

It was hard to go from unit studies and living books that we loved in our Beautiful Feet literature to a textbook too.

I could see this program working for a student that maybe didn’t mind a textbook approach and wanted a good overview of history along with Bible study.

Though it wasn’t a keeper for us, I could see that it has real benefits if you use it the way it was intended to be used. Adding in all the quizzes, writing and reading, it was a rigorous and challenging course.

I hope this gives you a glimpse into our year of using Notgrass because there really is no one program that fits everybody.

Hugs and love ya,

Did you miss these posts?

Review of What Every Child Needs to Know About Western Civilization by BrimWood Press.

History Makers Notebooking Pages – Famous Persons from Ancient to Modern – Set 2

How to Use a History Spine to Build Your Study of History

8 Ways to Teach Homeschool History Other Than Chronologically

Should Homeschool History Be Covered in Chronological Order?

How to Use a History Spine to Build Your Study of History

May 22, 2014 | 5 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

If asked about 15 years ago if I would still be using the same history curriculum today that I started off with undoubtedly I would have answered yes. Laughable uh? Truth of it is, I had no idea what a history spine was {it sounded kind of painful to be honest} let alone how to use a history spine to build my study of history.

Having a passion for keeping history an action packed story in my home, I have used many history spines and am excited about giving you a comparison between them coming up in some summer posts.

{Heads Up: I plan to blog as long as I can before I have to stop to move. Realizing that moving overseas may interrupt my summer, I will share my posts about comparing history spines at my first opportunity. I’m giving you the heads up now.}

What I want to focus on today is to explain what is a history spine and how to use one to create a study for your homeschool

.Too, I want to share a few resources that I use and are timeless spanning any number of years that you homeschool.

What is a history spine?

A simple definition would be that it would be an outline of a topic.

The flexible thing about any type of outline is that it can be comprehensive with very specific details and cover a broad scope.

On the other hand, they also can be very narrow with limited details and more in line like a scope and sequence.

Beyond being an outline about history, a spine can be about any event in history or even about a person.

Other than that, you have a whole host of options to choose from.

Look at my list of what a history spine can be:

History curriculum {an easy one}
Living Book
Biography
A primary resource
Textbook {you know not my favorite, but sometimes you need laid out}
Reference book
A unit study either providing just information or one laid out day by day
A history movie
Magazines

Right away you can see that some resources will be easier to use than others. Something like The Story of the World which has a very helpful question and answer format along with activities makes learning about history fun.

Whereas something like a history magazine will only have information presented and then you have to decide how to divide that up into manageable teaching lessons each day.

One of my very favorite resources to use over the years by far other than reference books has been a Guide to History Plus.

I put a picture here above so that you can see some of the information it contains. Though it has not been updated in a while, the references to the topics are timeless.

For example, under American History: Westward Expansion 1750-1860 it gives ideas for artists, authors, expansion, frontiersmen, immigration, inventors, preachers and unorthodox religious movements.

Ideas and topics for studying about a time period do not go out of date. You can see that Guides to History Plus is more like an outline than it is laying out each lesson day by day.

Then there is much more to consider too. Some history curriculum like The Story of the World is light on Bible content.

Some may see that as a negative because they may want Bible history folded in for them as they go along. For others, it is a positive because they prefer to tie in their own Bible resources.

Just me personally, I always preferred to tie in my own Bible studies and pick/choose which activities I wanted to study deeper on too instead of having it done for me. So, I enjoyed The Story of the World when the boys were little.

Then at the very tip top of the list for history spines when using living books and ones we have read over again and still keep are all the books by Genevieve Foster.

Having history come alive through a story, Genevieve Foster folds in other key events and key characters about a time period.

Fleshing out your history curriculum to study about those other topics makes history like the story it is and not a dry presentation of events.

Some years, I have used only reference books like The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia, 3rd edition which was just updated in 2012. I have the previous version and it is just fine too.

Below is the picture for the newer version.

Too, when looking for reference books after you have added a general reference book about world history like The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia, 3rd edition or even the The Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia Of World History, then there are an abundance of other wonderful helps that help you to hone in on certain time periods too.

For Mr. Senior 2013 to feed his love of history and because I needed something about the history of Britain, I found a wonderful help by DK called History of Britain & Ireland that honed in on the different eras.

Some simple tips to building your own study of history is to think about these things,

How much hand holding do I want? Do I want my lesson plans laid out daily or do I want more of a scope and sequence?
Is it a must to cover Bible history? If it is then the next question is do I want Bible history laid out in my curriculum or do I want to lay out my own Bible study course?
Do I feel comfortable adding in my hands-on activities or do I need some presented? Do my kids even care about hands on activities?
Does the history spine cover multiple ages of children? In choosing a history spine, aim to satisfy the needs of the oldest or more advanced learner because it is easier to simplify information for your youngest child at times than it is to find meatier reference for your middle or high school children.

As I mentioned coming up during the summer, I will be sharing different history spines I have used and comparing them to each other. Hopefully, they will help to narrow down some of what you want to use for this next year.

Other Resources and Books for History

Hugs and love ya,

Look at some of these other posts:

history

Hands-on History Activities for Learning about Ancient Civilizations

HANDS-ON HISTORY CONNECTING TO THE PAST

Mesopotamia

The Indus Valley

(Modern Day Pakistan)

Ancient China

Phoencia

(Modern day Lebanon)

Hands on History Ancient Civilizations Activities

Assyria and Ancient Babylon

(Modern day Iraq or northern part of Mesopotamia)

Ancient Greece

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Rome

30 Fun Resources for Learning About Daniel Boone

Learning About Daniel Boone

Language Arts Ideas for Learning About Daniel Boone

Life During the Colonial Period and on The Frontier During the Life of Daniel Boone

Geography Ideas for Studying About Daniel Boone.

Wilderness Survival Skills

Events During the Life of Daniel Boone

Hands-On Activities for Learning About Daniel Boone

Media about Daniel Boone

Books and Fun Resources To Learn About Daniel Boone

When We Used Story of the World as our History Spine

STORY OF THE WORLD AS A HISTORY SPINE

When we used Notgrass World History as our History Spine

How to Use a History Spine to Build Your Study of History

Other Resources and Books for History

Categories

Archives

history

HANDS-ON HISTORY CONNECTING TO THE PAST

Mesopotamia

The Indus Valley

(Modern Day Pakistan)

Ancient China

Phoencia

(Modern day Lebanon)

Hands on History Ancient Civilizations Activities

Assyria and Ancient Babylon

(Modern day Iraq or northern part of Mesopotamia)

Ancient Greece

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Rome

Learning About Daniel Boone

Language Arts Ideas for Learning About Daniel Boone

Life During the Colonial Period and on The Frontier During the Life of Daniel Boone

Geography Ideas for Studying About Daniel Boone.

Wilderness Survival Skills

Events During the Life of Daniel Boone

Hands-On Activities for Learning About Daniel Boone

Media about Daniel Boone

Books and Fun Resources To Learn About Daniel Boone

STORY OF THE WORLD AS A HISTORY SPINE

Other Resources and Books for History

Footer

Categories

Archives