Ancient Persia

We ended up spending this entire week on Ancient Persia instead of pushing forward into Ancient Babylon. The kids absolutely LOVE Ancient Mythologies: India, Persia, Babylon, Egypt by Charles Kovacs. We are using a red MLB since I use red for Cultural lessons (History/Geography).

After the story of Zarathustra I shared another legend which is better geared towards younger kids (1st/2nd grade) and helpful if you are homeschooling multiple ages and want to have your children together for some lessons. It is by Tomie dePaola: The Legend of the Persian Carpet.




I gave the children a box of prisms to explore after the legend. Another good follow-up would be dyeing your own wool. This is a good book to have in your Handwork arsenal as well, or in the back of your mind for 3rd grade Spinning & Weaving.

The Time-Life book series "Lost Civilizations" has nice resources for lots of ancient cultures and has a volume specifically on Persia: Persians: Masters of the Empire
. It would be a good book for teacher background or to have on hand for photos of archaeological digs and artifacts that have been uncovered.






In Cooking this week we did a Persian dish: Lentil Polow with Apricots, Cherries, and Pistachios. It was delicious! You can serve the pistachios on the side for kids who have allergies.

Don't forget Strauss... Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30 (Thus Spoke Zarathustra or Thus Spake Zarathustra) is a tone poem by Richard Strauss, composed in 1896. A chunk of it was used as the opening theme to 2001: A Space Odyssey: and you can listen to it here. Would it be a useful thing to expose students to? I will leave that to your own discretion.

Next week... Ancient Babylon!