Tag Archives: Ancient History

History ~Sumerian Civilization

booksI really liked the “Ancient Civilizations for Children-Mesopotamia” DVD and will probably get more from this series.

gilgimeshThe Epic of Gilgamesh was a little too scary two years ago when we studied this last so I was pretty excited we got to read some of the stories this time.

The Last Quest of Gilgamesh” touched on the flood myth, which is what I really wanted to read about since it has many similarities to Noah’s Flood.

We are still finishing “The Golden Bull” but so far it is a really good read!

It is about two children in the city of Ur and when it describes the city and different parts of their life we look it up in our reference books.

It really makes that time period come alive.

pomAfter learning that they ate Pomegranates I bought one for the boys to try.

I found this really great tutorial on how to open them.

eatingThe boys liked it a lot!

messAs you can see from this boys face.

writingI had the boys try their hand at Cuneiform again also.

All you need is some Air Dry Clay, Pictures of what it looked like, and Chopsticks.

tablet2They used reeds to make the impressions for the real thing but I found the edge of a chopstick worked pretty well.

presstabletlookingCuneiformTabletsMy youngest really enjoyed making his!

He wanted to do more but I did not really want to use up all our clay on this project!

Because I am sentimental, here are some pics from when we did this project over two years ago!

oldest lasttime oldThe cuteness is a bit too much for me…

The Ice Age and Glaciers

booksIt can be difficult to find any information on the Ice Age from a Christian perspective.

I ended up buying “Life in the Great Ice Age” by Michael and Beverly Oard.

insidebookIt follows a young boy growing up at the end of the Ice Age from a biblical point of view.

It was such an amazing resource!

We leaned heavily on the Answers in Genesis site also.

glacierI did some searches for “Glaciers for kids” and came up with some interesting projects.

I cannot find the source for this one but it was a great idea.

You take a piece of ice(you can make some with bits of rocks and sand in them also) and slowly press it down and over on playdough.

Mimicking a glaciers movement.

movingWe read about what makes a glacier a glacier first and then did this project.

trailAfter we had done this we looked at pictures of valleys made from glaciers.

It was so much easier for them to see how the glacier could have carved it out after doing it for themselves!

Since my husband and I just went to Glacier National Park in September, I used many of my own pictures to talk about glaciers.

materialsThe boys were really fascinated with the cave paintings in the book so after reading what materials they used to make their paint we decided to try it for ourselves.

crushingWe used, egg white, orange juice, and coals from our fire.

crushing2The boys took turns crushing the coals into a powder.

makingpaintThen we mixed it all together.

cavepaint caveartThey tried to use pieces of grass to draw with but had better luck with paint brushes.

airblownMy oldest was really fascinated with the hand prints on the cave walls so we tried to recreate air brushing.

We used just plain straws but the boys are not good at keeping suction so most of the paint would come out and I think the opening needed to be smaller for it to spray.

sprayThey still had fun though and got the idea.

sprayerWe broke out the big guns and used a sidewalk chalk sprayer someone had given us a while ago.

handSuccess!

We studied the effects of ash clouds from Volcanoes also.

“Life in the Great Ice Age” had given that as one of their theories as to why the earth would have been cooler then.

There is a lot of evidence of increased volcanic activity during that time.

There is a lot of information and videos out there about that since we just had that big ash cloud in 2010 from the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull.

Just looking at the pictures of how dark it was and how bad visibility was really helped that time period come alive.

hotAnother theory they brought up was that the ocean temperatures would have risen due to the waters from the deep coming up during the flood.

That would have caused an increase in evaporation and more rain or snow.

The colder temps with the increased snowfall would have caused more glaciers to form.

After reading that I asked the boys if warmer water evaporates faster than cooler water.

Since they were not sure we did an experiment.

I put two cups of water in a pot on the stove to heat on low and another two cups of cold just sitting out at room temp.

We than checked the amount in each every hour.

It was really easy for them to see that the hot water was evaporating very quickly.

I really enjoyed this study and learned so much!

School in December

With the holidays we did not get much school done but here is a peek into what our month looked like.

writing book

We finally got a new board for our All About Spelling tiles.

spellingI tried to make do with a small one to save space but it was just not cutting it!

I hung this one on the back of the door with command strips.

spelling2They recommend hanging it horizontally but I did not have a space.

It seems to work just fine vertically.

math math2 math3Math time!

noah pouringWe were learning about the flood so we re-enacted it.

I had wanted to do this on a larger scale outside but it turned cold so we improvised.

fossilsWe used clay and some plastic animals to make “fossils”.

fossilbook insidebookWe have been reading through “Dry bones and other Fossils” for our science.

I really like this book, it offers a Christian perspective of fossils.

dirtWe did the project from the book about how dirt and rock layers are made.

layers pourdirt dirtlayers

I am looking forward to a normal month of school!

We are almost done with our math book!

I will be so happy when we have finished the next book!

Trying to finish two in one school year has limited our field trip days more than I would like!

*We found  a really good Imagination Station episode on the Tower of Babel called “The Tower“.

It was really great at making the story come alive!