Terracotta Warriors lesson

There are certain homeschool history lessons that have no great historical significance, but they’re fun and interesting.  This Terracotta Warriors lesson is one of those lessons.  There is no huge historical significance, but it reveals a lot of cultural for the time, and it’s a fascinating bit of history.

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Terracotta Warriors lesson

We read the Terracotta Warrior lesson from the Mystery of History 1 and then took a few minutes to watch a few videos on youtube.

and then one more, there are dozens on youtube.

There’s a lot of great stuff on the Terracotta Warriors because they are so intriguing.  After all these warriors have inspired:

The Mummy 3*- a mildly amusing movie, if for not other reason then to watch all those Terracotta warriors come to life.

The China exhibit at Disney World- My China-obsessed son happily spent an extended period of time at Epcot.

A very cool traveling exhibit which my husband and I had lots of fun spending hours at.  I took way too many pictures at that exhibit, which I ended up mostly deleting as I realized I don’t need detailed pictures of EVERY.  SINGLE.  STATUE.  My poor hard drive.

And several cheesy direct-to-video or made-for-TV movies that I’ve seen over the years.

Now when we were at the exhibit, knowing we’d be covering the Terracotta Warriors lesson soon I picked up a Terracotta Warriors Excavation Kit*.

Terracotta Warriors Excavation Kit

I set the kids up with the kit on a big huge towel and let them go at the digging.  They loved digging out their warrior, and they still talk about digging up the warrior.  The one I picked up at the exhibit is one of the better ones I’ve seen (I’m not convinced the one on Amazon is the same).

After a while, they were just turning their excavation into powder, so I sent them outside and the kids had fun turning their terracotta warrior excavation kit into powder, and painting the powder on the house.

That part I was a little less excited about.

But, it definitely shows they remembered the lesson because we visited Disney World a full year after we studied the Terracotta Warriors lesson and they still remembered it all.  So, I’ll pretend their destructive tendencies were what they needed to remember the lesson.

More Terracotta Warrior lesson ideas

• Art in History Terracotta Warrior model (I’m getting this one next time)
• Terracotta Warriors art lesson
• Terracotta Warriors printable