Experience Ancient Greece with These Hands-on Homeschool Activities

ancient Greek ruins
One of the allures of BookShark is rather than teaching history to your children from a dry, boring history book, your children learn about history through literature. Instead of merely learning the facts about Ancient Greek culture and events, your children learn through characters (both fictional and historical) in an engaging narrative.

You can bring that knowledge to life even further by supplementing BookShark’s curriculum with hands-on learning experiences and culinary delights. Whether your child is using BookShark Level B for ages 6-8 (1st Grade) or Level 6 for ages 11-13 (6th grade), they’ll enjoy these extra world history activities. For older kids using Level 6, let them take more ownership in the planning (and clean up) of the projects. For younger kids in Level 1, you'll need to take the lead.

Ancient Greece: Activities

1. Create a LEGO Parthenon

For the LEGO fans in your home, why not create the Greek Parthenon? Find photos online for inspiration, and enhance your building with LEGO minifigures from the time period.

2. Create a Physical Map of Greece

Form self-hardening clay into the mainland of Greece and all the many islands. Do this inside a 9 x 13” glass baking pan or deep sheet pan. After you let it completely dry, pour a pitcher of water dyed blue over the model. You’ll have the beautiful Greek mainland and islands as well as the Aegean Sea. For older students, you can create flags attached to toothpicks and insert them in the land masses to identify each of the islands.

3. Make a Greek Vase

You can make your own vase with papier mache, or you can simply buy a plain terracotta vase from the store. Then all you’ll need is a pencil and a black marker or acrylic paint pen. Search the Internet for actual Greek vase designs as inspiration. Sketch out the design in pencil first, and then go over it with a fine-tipped permanent marker.

Experience Ancient Greece with These Hands-on Homeschool Activities

4. Star Gaze

Learn the Greek constellations and then go out after dark to locate them in the night sky. Lay down a blanket for comfortable star gazing, use a mobile app to help you begin your search, and bring out some munchies like popcorn.

Ancient Greece: Foods

What better way to learn about a people than eating the foods that they typically ate or are most famous for? For your Greek feast, consider these culinary delights. If cooking really isn't your thing, look for a local restaurant where you can take a mid-day field trip to try the dishes.

1. Gyros

Cook lamb and make gyros. Simply cook and slice the lamb thinly and place on a pita along with cucumbers and tzatziki. You can buy the tzatziki ready-made or mix up your own with yogurt, cucumbers, garlic, salt, olive oil, and herbs.

2. Greek Salad

Serve a Greek salad with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, and feta cheese. Add a drizzle of olive oil and lemon juice over the whole salad.

3. Make a Greek Salad Skewer

Don’t have time for a full Greek feast? Why not make a Greek hors d’oeuvre? Simply skewer one grape tomato, one slice of cucumber, half of a black olive, and a cube of cheese onto a toothpick. This is a quick snack that will give your kids the taste of Ancient Greece without hours of preparation.

Round out your Greek meal with hummus, goat cheese, and olives. For a fun dessert, you can serve baklava.

Of course, you don’t have to do all of these activities. Choose one or two that fit into your schedule and your child’s interest. Your child will likely remember doing these activities for years to come, and in turn, they’ll remember their study of Ancient Greece.

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