Monday, September 15, 2008

Story of the World

We are using Story of the World as our guide for history. I love these books! Instead of teaching history by jumping all over (US history this year, state history next year, world history the following year) it starts at the beginning. This year we will be learning about the Ancient Times.

Our first week we learned about historians. The boys are making their own history books and their first project was to be a historian. They gathered pictures, interviewed our family, and put everything together to develop a timeline of our family.

We followed that with learning what archaeologists do. Our friend, Ann, set up an "archaeological dig" in her backyard. The boys had a blast.


Our second week we learned about the earliest people called the nomads. We learned about how they lived, what they ate, and why they were called nomads. To see how nomads lived we did "cave paintings" with them. Our friend, Tara, made all the kids (we do these projects with two other families) prehistoric hunger's game bags. The early nomads would make these bags and go out and hunt for food (usually eggs, lizards, snakes, and fish). My kids found trash....figures!





This week we are learning about how they lived along the Nile River. We made a replica of the Nile River and planted grass seed. We than "flooded" the river so that it can water our seeds (just like the early farmers). We will hopefully remember to flood our Nile River every week and watch our seeds grow.



On Wednesday the boys will be at the park with our friends while I take my mom to the doctor. They will be making the white crown of the Upper Egypt king and the Pharaoh's shepherd's crook. I hope they take pictures!!!

Next week we will learn how the Egyptians learned to write. Stay tuned!