SOTW, Ancient Times: Introduction

Books, projects, and activities in this post are appropriate for children in the grammar stage of their classical education (grades 1-4 or ages 6-9). 

Introduction: How Do We Know What Happened?

What Is History?

First we read the section titled "What Is History?" from our book. Then we read pages viii-ix from our Kingfisher History Encyclopedia.

NOTEBOOK PAGE

I created my own notebooking pages to go along with our history curriculum. Nothing out there seemed to be exactly what I wanted. Because we are currently in  the grammar stage, I do not expect a lot of writing from my daughter. Just one or two sentences showing me that she understands what we read. I also wanted a notebooking page with a large area for an illustration, as I feel that art and creativity are an important part of learning and understanding. For a child unable to express themselves through writing, illustrations are the next best thing.

PROJECT

To understand what a timeline is, I had my children make a timeline of their lives, showing them from birth to their current age. Bridget is my primary student studying history, as George is only 3 years old. He will stick around for the fun things like stories and projects.

TIMELINE

After the children made their own timeline, I introduced them to what we will be using for our big history timeline. While we did not necessarily study a specific topic in history, I felt that the best way to begin our timeline of the world is with Jesus Christ. They know who he is and that he lived a long time ago. Because we will begin our studies with events that happened before Jesus Christ, this is my way of putting things into perspective into their minds of when an event occurred.

What Is Archaeology?

We read the section from our book and also page ix from our Kingfisher History Encyclopedia.

NOTEBOOK PAGE
Her drawing illustrates how archaeologists dig to find artifacts from long ago.

COLORING PAGE
I printed out this coloring page of an archaeologist from here. My 3-year-old always wants to color with us. So my first graders is on top and my preschoolers is on the bottom (though I am sure you could have figured that out).

MAPWORK
Our first bit of mapwork is an introduction to the continents, along with rivers and mountain ranges and the villages and cities built around them.

BOOKS WE READ

VOCABULARY

We add these words to our "dictionary" which is basically pieces of binder paper divided by letter with handwritten (by me) words and definitions. I try to make the definitions as easy as possible so that she can soon read them on her own.

-history
-historian
-archaeology
-archaeologist
-artifact

AROUND THE WEB

I do not get to do nearly as much as I want to do with my children and various school subjects, as time does not always allow it. I do love getting ideas from sites like Pinterest and other blogs, and as I find those I will put them here for future use, as I have two more that will be moving up to grammar stage history before I know it!