Ancient History Lessons

At this point in our homeschool journey, we have gone through Ancient history twice in our homeschool history, and there’s a lot of great activities you can do with this time period.

 

Ancient History supplies

We used The Mystery of History 1 for our spine, so ancient history has a fair amount of Bible history built into it.  In addition, there are several great resources you can use.  Most of them I will mention as we hit that particular time in history, but  here’re a few resources we used throughout the year:

Drive Thru History– Videos driving through all the famous sights of ancient history, great for upper elementary and middle school

Decisive Battles– You can also find many of these episodes on youtube, but if you have trouble with streaming, buying the DVDs is a great option

 

Creation to 1199 BC Super Ancient history

This first quarter covers topics that are mainly in the Bible or part of a legend that has only recently due to new archaeological finds been included as part of history.

• Creation Story Unit– Because we have used several different Christian curricula, many of them cover this bit of history, and I teach Sunday School and cover this story every two years, we’ve done several different activities on this topic.  The first several lessons go on to cover the Fall of Man and Noah.
• Dinosaurs– Because any ancient history homeschool lesson has to have some dinosaurs in it 🙂
• Ancient Sumerian Activities– my kids loved these activities
• Stonehenge– There are so many fun theories about this particular bit of ancient history
• Ancient Minoan Activities-any lesson where you get to pretend to jump a bull is a fun lesson
• We continue this quarter with more Bible lessons from Genesis,  Exodus, and the book of Judges
• This is, of course, interspersed with some great Ancient Egypt lessons like these:

Ancient Egyptian Activities

I find ancient Egypt fascinating, and there are so many fun activities you can do with that time period, so of course, I have lots of posts on it. All of which you can find over on the Ancient Egyptian Activities for kids.

Of course, as the Egyptian Empire is fading, the Greek Empire is rising, and there are amazing activities you can do with that time in Ancient history.

Ancient Greece Activities

 

Ancient Greece is the dawn of Western Civilization, so, of course, I had a lot of fun studying this time.

 

 

Of course, while all of this is going on we have to swing back to Israel for some more of their history.

Ancient Israel history

Israel in the meantime has gone through 3 good kings,  A Civil War, and a whole mess of terrible kings in Northern Israel, and then a mix of good and bad kings in Southern Judah.

We learn about a whole slew of Jewish prophets to many different countries.

 

Checking back in with Europe, we find they’re chugging along in our Ancient History homeschool lessons

Greece is having fun with the Olympic games, and Rome is finally getting their empire kicked off.

On the other side of the world, India has created the caste system and Hinduism.

 

Back in Israel, they are in a spot of trouble, let’s check back in with them for a few ancient history lessons

Jerusalem has fallen to Babylon, and that sparks a whole series of lessons about Ancient Babylon.  They’re an interesting group.  But they burn out quite quickly leading to the Persian Empire.  Persia gets a fun queen, and a king full of personality.

 

Romans are taking over the Ancient History homeschool lessons

 

There’s the general Julius Caesar, who created our current calendar, so I’m rather thankful for him.  Besides, he named my birthday month.

 

But, this all leads to the big turning point in history.  We needed all of what’s been covered so far to get:

And that ends our fun little romp through Ancient history for our homeschool lessons.

 

Looking for still more Ancient history homeschool resources?

 

Check out my Mystery of History 1 Pinterest board.