Ancient China Packet

by Liesl - Homeschool Den

We have been studying Ancient China this semester. We are using The Story of Ancient China (affiliate link) (see more about that below) as our spine, but also have read selections from the Story of the World (affiliate link) and the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia.

This is the packet that I made to go along with some of our readings. These are now included in our 100+ page Ancient China Unit.

Recently, we studied Ancient China again. I expanded this packet and it is now well over 100+ pages. You can find more information about it here: Ancient China Packet

Below are some pictures of what is included in the new unit. See the Ancient China Post for more pictures and more information!

Ancient China Unit

In addition to the long list I shared with you of children’s fiction and non-fiction books about China, we are using the The Story of Ancient China (affiliate link) by Suzanne Strauss Art as our spine. It’s a wonderful textbook to read aloud to elementary age students. Middle school students would have no trouble reading this on their own. We have the earlier edition because we bought it used. If you are doing a unit/semester just on China, I highly recommend this book!

We read the legend about how silk came to be made in Story of the World and the kids summarized what we read on one of the sheets from the packet I made:

Silk in Ancient China Worksheet

And as we studied the Shang Dynasty, we had a lot of fun learning some of the Chinese characters. A couple of books we recommend are

Long is a Dragon: Chinese Writing for Children Terrific introduction to calligraphy.
Liu and the Bird: A journey in Chinese Calligraphy Introduces Chinese characters

The kids created little flap books to add to their history notebook: Chinese Character Activity

We also read the book, Bound (affiliate link), when we first started this unit. It is wonderful. We highly recommend it!

This is a really fun choose your own adventure book that your kids might like as well: Ancient China: An Interactive History Adventure (You Choose: Historical Eras) (affiliate link)

Note: When we talked about Ancient China again, my girls both did map projects on the Great Wall of China using project blocks (affiliate link). I thought I would include a couple photos of their projects here in case your kids are interested!

A silly picture with Boomer!

Be sure to check out our Ancient World notebook pages! This set includes 28 blank pages including early history, ancient India, China, Greece, Rome and more!

China Unit:

China Fact Sheet

China Unit: Books, Books! A Huge List of Children’s Books – This is a comprehensive list of all the children and youth books we could find relating to China. Since my kids range from 6-10, I wanted books that would appeal to my kindergartner as well as novels to read to my older kids. You can download and print our list out.

Chinese Brush Painting Lesson

Remember, we have lots of other history resources as well:

Ancient Egypt Unit

Free Ancient World Worksheets (Egypt, Mesopotamia, India)
Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome Worksheets and Activities
Ancient Greece Unit for Kindergarten, Grade 1 or 2
Feudalism and Medieval Life Packet
European History Packet 1500-1750 – Renaissance, Reformation, Age of Absolutism, Scientific Revolution,
Navajo Indians – History Notebook Pages
World Facts Packet – We often startout the semester going over some basic information such as: *What are the 4 largest countries in the world? What countries have the largest population? Then we went over some basic facts about world geographical features (the longest river, tallest mountains, largest cities, etc.) and more.
Oregon Trail Lapbook and Notebook Pages

See you again soon here or over at our Homeschool Den Facebook Page! Don’t forget to Subscribe to our Homeschool Den Newsletter. You might also want to check out some of our resources pages above (such as our Science, Language Arts, or History Units Resource Pages) which have links to dozens of posts. You might want to join our free Homeschool Den Chat Facebook group. Don’t forget to check out Our Store as well.

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Happy Homeschooling!

~Liesl

P.S. We also have two modern history units. These are appropriate for upper middle school or high school:

World War I Unit (100+ pages)

Our World War I Unit starts with a study of imperialism and nationalism, dives into the causes of World War I with a close look at militarism, territorial disputes, and the complicated secret alliances of this period. We talked about the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente… and did a lot of map work in connection to all of those themes (imperialism, nationalism, and the military alliances prior to WWI).

Once we covered the causes of WWI, we took a look at some of the key battles and spent time looking at the weapons and strategies used in WWI. We spent quite a bit of time talking about the complicated events of 1917 — the Russian Revolution and the U.S. entering the war. We spent time on the U.S. war effort and Woodrow Wilson’s efforts for world peace with his 14 Points. We spent a couple of days wrapping up the WWI unit by talking about the Treaty of Versailles, the results of the war, and the new map of Europe.