Each year I set mini goals throughout the year. Benchmarks, so to speak, to get through all of the work we *should* finish that year. This is an Ancient History year in our rotation and I set a goal to be done with Ancient Egypt by Thanksgiving. Last time through, we got a *little* stuck in Ancient Egypt and never really did the Greeks and Romans justice. By some sort of miracle, even with everything else going on, we are actually finishing up right on time!
Here is our overview of Ancient Egypt.
Core Text
Story of The World Volume 1, Chapters 1-4, 6-8, 12-14
We read this together once or twice/week throughout the fall. Towards the end of the fall, I began giving them specific tasks while I was reading and I noticed a great improvement in the quality of their narrations and comprehension when they were busy on a related task (mapping or poster making usually) while I was reading.
Additional Individual Reading
Each of the older three kids were assigned to read two of the above books. They are roughly in order from least challenging to most, although the final 4 books are all fairly similar in reading difficulty. Caleb also re-read through the Kane Chronicles (Rick Riordan) series and they checked out the first couple books on CD from the library which Kylee enjoyed listening to as well.
Supplemental History Books
Moses Leads the People
Egyptians (Usborne)
These books were just on our bookshelf and the kids picked them up here and there.
Tie-In To Religion
Various Godly Play presentations focusing on Abraham through Joseph and God's 10 Best Ways. This was mostly for Lucie and Logan, although the older three frequently joined in. (Random note- looking at this picture I am SOOOOOO glad we finally chopped her hair off!)
Tie-In To Geography
During the historical study of a specific region, I like to study the same area geographically and politically, so we focused on the land/water forms and political geography of the continent of Africa. We did a variety of mapping and used our iPad puzzle maps to work on political geography of Africa (links below).
Geography Books/Stories
Tie-In To Math
Egyptian Numeral Overview (ETC Montessori) for Aidan and Caleb, covered basic hieroglyph numbers and simple calculations.
Montessori Resources
Timeline of Ancient Civilizations (ETC Montessori)
Biome Stencil of Africa (Waseca)
Elementary Continent Map- Specifically the Africa land/water form cards (Waseca)
Animals- Africa, LITE (Rantek iPad App)
Africa Puzzle Map (Rantek iPad App)
Africa Continent Box
The reality of studying history is that in one year, you can never cover all of even one segment. I find it is better to choose one or two things to really focus on and let the rest go. With the help of Pinterest and the rest of the World Wide Web, it is possible to come up with dozens (hundreds) more books and activities but I am a firm believer that just because we can doesn't mean we should or need to :)
Additional Ancient Egypt Resources
This post contains affiliate links, all items included in this post were used as a part of this unit.
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