Ancient Civilizations

Tomorrow I begin the final camp of the summer: two weeks on Ancient Civilizations. I intend to have us start with the Neandertals. Who can imagine living in a time before there was language? Or Art or Religion? We'll do an archaeological dig tomorrow, raw foods, charcoal and clay cave paintings (since we can't stay that far in the past forever!) and I really want them to start to realize just how much technology we have that we all take for granted. The first camp was food. The second shelter. The third story/culture. The fourth is technology. I have been thinking all day (and having it be Buy Local week here is resonating with me as well). Each thing I touch I think Do I know the person who made this? What would I do if I went to the stores tomorrow and this thing wasn't there -- could I make it myself? Do I even know how it's made? Then I was thinking I would support cottage industries by NOT buying something unless I bought it directly from the person who made it (bye bye China) but then I immediately realized at the grocery store that I don't know the cow that made my milk. Nor do I know anyone who works refining crude oil into gasoline. I don't know the person who made this computer or my sheets, pillows, mattress, or bed. The carpet, the paint, the walls of my home... all of it just shows up somehow in the store and I trade my shiny little metal things for their hard work and effort. I want the kids to have this realization as well. We'll be covering Croesus and the advent of weighed and stamped measures of gold by the end of this week but before that all our classroom dramatics will have to use the barter system.

I bought some different colored clays from around the world which will be so cool to paint with. And some raw flax and silk so we can spin something other than wool!

For F&G I wrote all the plans in advance but the other camps I have drafted and then been flexible. I have tried to keep notes each day as to my daily plan and I will gather them up and put them online. I do have detailed plans for week 1 of Ancient Civ and then will adjust my mental notes for week 2 (Ancient Greece and Rome) based on our speed covering the material. Basically, we are doing chapters 1 through 40 of V.M. Hillyer's A Child's History of the World.

Day One

Music & Movement 9 am 20 minutes

Opening Circle 9:20 am 10 minutes
http://www.cobblestonepub.com/magazine/dig/dig0709.html
“The Truth about Cavemen”

Nature Walk/Snack 9:30 am 20 minutes
No language, art, or religion – experience what this might have been like

Storytelling 9:50 am 20 minutes
A Child’s History of the World Chapters 1-4
Sharing creation stories, different people believe different things, you get to choose with your family what you believe; the fact is, we don’t know for sure

Morning Activity 10:10 am 50 minutes
Establish teams, give names
Set up archaeology dig for other team – choose one artifact to bury
http://www.cobblestonepub.com/fa_sandlund.html?x=6.07250601053240874994001216947186 “Archaeology in the Classroom” article
Each team is going to answer 6 questions about their research topic – paint the rainbow
Return to archaeological dig, prepare presentations

Art 11:20 am 30 minutes
Team A: Charcoal
Team B: Clay

Cooking Activity/Resting 12:20 pm 20 minutes
Raw foods (harvest from the garden)

Storytelling 12:40 pm 20 minutes
Chap 5 – Real History Begins or ‘Way ‘Way Back to the Time of the Gypsies
Chap 6 – The Puzzle-Writers
Chap 7 – The Tomb-Builders

Afternoon Activity 1:00 pm 50 minutes
Team A: Hieroglyphs (stamp set)
Team B: Levers, pulleys – inventing the wheel

Poetry/Drama 1:50 pm 20 minutes

Cleanup Jobs 2:30 pm 20 minutes

Closing Circle 2:50 pm 10 minutes
Begin timeline
Add historical periods/events to timeline at the end of each day






Materials List

Watercolor paper, paints, brushes, paint jars, pencils and string

Plain white index cards or white paper

Two artifacts for teams to bury (of their choice), trowels, paintbrushes, towels

Graph paper

Charcoal

Clay (dug from schoolyard)
clay mask sample kit: http://www.elegantminerals.com/Naturalclays.html

Hieroglyph stamp set (one from classroom, one from home)

Ink pads, stamp cleaner

Photocopy of hieroglyph chart for take-home

Long roll of paper for timeline

Parent letter