Ancient Greece

This year, Casia has been studying history from the beginning, the very beginning. I choose to do this for two main reasons. The first was because her general understanding of history was non-existent. Early American History, the Renaissance, and Medieval times were all lumped together with no concept of how long ago they happened. The other reason was because Casia already had a strong desire to learn about the ancient Greeks. She is very familiar with Greek Mythology having been reading about it on her own for the last three years so the chance to learn about the history and culture of Greece was very appealing to her. 

I didn't start with ancient Greece, however, but started with the Egyptians (after a brief unit on prehistoric humans) and worked up to the Greeks. It's hard sometimes for me to figure out the best way to approach subjects, but this made the most sense to me since the Egyptian civilization predated the Greeks. I had intended after a unit on ancient Egypt, to have Casia study Mesopotamia, and continue in a more roughly chronological order, but after about two months of studying Egypt, I ended the unit and switched to Greece because she was anxious to get to the Greeks.

I have to say, there is such a wealth of videos and books available on this subject. The difficulty wasn't in finding resources, it was in picking the best fit for Casia's interest level and academic abilities. Since we don't have tv at our house (well, no tv service like cable; we do have actual televisions and a dvd player,) we decided in January to get Netflix. Previously, I had been going to the public library to pull our videos. It was cheap, accessible (we were there every week anyway for books) and had a decent variety, but it was just that much more I had to keep tabs on for due dates. We still use the library, but I am loving Netflix. In addition to the one dvd at a time that we get, we can instantly download videos which is perfect for a non-planned video (like on a sick day). I use the videos to supplement both history, language arts and science. 

The best videos we watched were: a three video series by PBS called Greeks: Crucible of Civilization, Nova: Secrets of the Parthenon, and National Geographic: Beyond the Movie: Alexander the Great. Casia read more than a dozen books on the Greeks on such topics as temples, mythology, culture & art, history, and biographies on influential figures like Aristotle, Archimedes, Alexander the Great and Thales. She also learned about Cleisthenes, Pericles, Socrates and Plato. 

We combined some history and language arts in this unit. Casia wrote a 500 word essay on Greek Mythology. Since it's a favorite topic of hers, I thought Casia would have plenty to say about it and she could focus on improving her writing skills. We worked particularly on editing, opening and closing paragraphs and on providing sufficient and appropriate details to back up her main points. She chose to write a comparison between Greek and Egyptian Mythology. 

In addition, Casia read Plutarch's Lives, the section on Alexander the Great. She and I both read Homer's Odyssey (okay, it was a reread for me but it had been a long time). At first it was really hard for her to get into it, but as soon as Odysseus appeared in the story, it started to pick up. By the end, she couldn't put it down and it earned a nine out of ten on the Casia Scale. I was glad to have an assigned reading for her that's actually around her reading level. I find that in history, the books she reads to garner information on a topic are at a lower reading level, but provide the appropriate depth of content she requires. The books at her reading level tend to be too dry to capture her interest and I feel she actually gets less out of them for that reason. So turning to historic literature seems to be a good alternative. We are looking forward to getting the movie Odyssey (waiting for it on hold from the library) and watching it as a special treat. Casia and I had a little competition to see who would finish the book first; the winner gets to pick the movie treat and have a soda. I guess I'll be drinking water.