New Testament, Greek and Roman History

I had a change of heart on how to go forward teaching Ancient History to the boys second semester last year (Stop laughing, I know I keep tweaking things.  What can I say my approach is a work in progress.).  Rather than trying to get through all of Ancient History in one year, I broke things up into two years.  

Last year we focused on the Old Testament and the civilization that had a direct impact on it, i.e. Mesopotamia, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persians, Hittites, etc.  

This year we will focus on the New Testament, Greece and Rome.  What I like about this approach is that it allows us to layer much of what we learned last year.  As we start studying the Greeks we will have time to review what was happening in other parts of the world we already studied,  My hope is that this layering approach will really cement in the learning.

We are about six weeks into our new school year and our new plan appears to be going very well.

We are using "On the Shores of the Great Sea (OTS)" by Synge as the backbone of our study, along with the first 12 chapters of "Discovery of New Worlds".  This was the original "Story of the World" (literally titled that back in the 1800s).  For those looking for an alternative to the Bauer books I highly recommend this series, the chapters are short, sweet, entertaining and informative.  Plus if you're budget conscious you can read it for free online.

We started the year with review, reading Chapters 11 to 18 and notebooking(I like these Notebooking pages with Rows by Donna Young).  We will doing a notebooking entry for each book/chapter we read this year.

Though "On the Shores of the Great Sea" will be our backbone, we will be using a few other core books, along with extra books on the side.
 
Children's Plutarch "Tales of the Greeks" is another core book. This is a series of biographies of the big names of history that the boys are thoroughly enjoying as well.  It is one of many adaptations of the original stories written by Plutarch born around the Greek-Persian War. It adds more detail and reinforces the information learned in OTS.  It too is available to read on-line for free or purchase e-book/hardcopy.  Later in the year we will switch to Famous Men of Rome.

I am going to try to use "Streams of Civilization" by Stanton & Hyma as review at each break in history.  For instance, first we read the OTS chapters on the Greek-Persian War, then Plutarch and other books, then we wrap it all up with Streams of Civilization.

Here's my current list of extra books we plan to read throughout the year:

• You Wouldn't Want to be a Greek Athlete by Michael Ford Boys love these books!
• Olympics by Osborne
• You Wouldn't want to be a Slave in Ancient Greece
• The First Marathon: Legend of Pheidippides by Susan Reynolds This book is awesome! We found it by accident at the library. I've seen the boys pick it up to read again and again.
• Children of the Fox by Jill Paton Walsh  I can't remember reading a better piece of historical fiction in a long time.  It's three books in one.  I was reading the first book this weekend out-loud and they all begged me (even Chris) to finish reading the whole thing, no one wanted to wait to find out what happened.
• Secrets of the Parthenon (video free online) The boys found this fascinating.  In the middle Lance asked if it was an hour because he didn't want it to stop.
• You Wouldn't Want to be a Roman Soldier
• You Wouldn't Want to be in Alexander the Great's Army
• The Librarian Who Measured the Earth by Lasky 
• Roman City by David Macaulay or watch here The boys really enjoyed the video on Pyramids this past year, they asked to watch it many times.
• You Wouldn't Want to be a Roman Gladiator
• Cleopatra by Diana Stanley
• You Wouldn't Want to be Cleopatra
• I saw the Games in the Colosseum available in book or ipad interactive app
• The Flight of Pompeii available in book or ipad interactive app
• You Wouldn't Want to Live in Pompeii
• Pompeii Buried alive by Kunhardt
• Adventures in the Catacombs of Rome available in book or ipad app 
• Usborne Internet Linked Greeks and Romans (for reference or free time reading)
• Time Traveler - Story of Rome (for reference or free time reading)

So that's the plan and I think its one we might actually stick to this year :-)

Here's a random quote for the day:
Traditional school tramples the personality and starves the mind.