Ancient Greece Unit for Kindergarten, Grade 1 or 2

Ancient Greece Unit

Many homeschoolers start off with a unit on the  Ancient world. Our family was no different! 🙂 When LD was 6 (and the girls were 4 and 2), we started with units on Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece.  I thought I would share some of the activities and books we used for our Ancient Greece Unit.   You’ll see that the way we pull units together hasn’t changed much over the years!

1) Books: We gather lots and lots of books for our unit.  We use fiction and non-fiction. In this unit we found a number of Greek myths written for young children and spent much of our unit learning about those myths.  We also had the Story of the World  (affiliate link) and some other basic history books and read some selections from those as well.

• Ancient Greek Unit — Read Aloud Books (The kids were 2, 4 and 6.) These were the core mythology books we used:

2) Geography: We almost always spend quite a bit of time learning about the geography of the region we art studying. Sometimes we use pin maps or cookie maps (yum!). In our Ancient Greece unit, we made a clay map and then added water. And these days (now that the kids are older), we also use maps that they label and add to their history notebooks with physical features (mountains, seas, rivers, etc) as well as key countries and/or cities.

• Ancient Greece Geography Project (part 1)

• Ancient Greece Geography Project — Aegean Sea (part 2)

When we were learning about the history of Ancient Greece we learned about the importance of the seas.  The kids then designed their own boats and tested them out.  Ancient Greece: The Importance of the Seas

3) Hands-on Projects: We’ve always done a lot of hands-on projects and crafts with our history and science units. Our projects are related to the books we’ve read. For example, the Medusa mask we made stemmed from this book we read about  Perseus and the Monstrous Medusa (affiliate link). The kids *loved* these First Greek Myth books:

• Medusa Craft (We did this when the kids were 2, 4, and 6)

• Parthenon Craft We used a free online printable and a cereal box to make this craft!

4) Greek Gods and Goddesses:

Be sure to check out our Greek Gods and Goddesses Packet!  It has lots of fun activities for learning about the most well-known ancient Greek gods and goddesses!

• There are more than a dozen  Greek Myth Games and Activities at this website

5) Resources we used (in addition to picture books)

• The Story of the World: Volume 1: Ancient Times: From the Earliest Nomads to the Last Roman Emperor (affiliate link)
• The Story of the World, Activity Book 1: Ancient Times  (affiliate link) There are a lot of wonderful activity ideas in this book. It has maps, coloring pages, hands-on project ideas and much more. I highly recommend this, even if you choose a different history text for your child.
• Ancient Greece!: 40 Hands-On Activities to Experience This Wondrous Age (affiliate link) We browsed through both this book and the one below and chose a number of activities for the kids. These were projects that you can easily do with materials you probably have on hand.
• Classical Kids: An Activity Guide to Life in Ancient Greece and Rome (affiliate link)

6) How long do we spend on each unit? The length of our units really varies, but on average I would say we spent about 3 weeks when the kids were younger. Now that the kids are older our units last considerably longer.

7) What written work do the kids do for each unit? This has changed a lot over time.  In this unit (back when LD was in first grade), he didn’t do any written work per-se for history. At that time, the kids made lapbooks, did copywork, and practiced handwriting/writing… which could easily be adapted to do with a history unit such as this, but we did not do this.

• Free Lapbook Resources on Ancient Greece: If your child/student is passionate about Ancient Greece and you think they might enjoy working on a written project, you can check out Homeschool Share’s free Ancient Greece lapbook. Tina over at Dynamic Homeschool Plus also has amazing lapbook resources and has a  free Ancient Greece lapbook as well.

Now that the kids are older we use a lot of notebook pages.  The kids are learning to take notes and highlight key points, but that’s a skill they are only starting to develop (from 4th grade and beyond in our family…). You’ll find that we have a lot of packets and free resources on other history topics (Ancient China, Native Americans, Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Civil Rights Movement, etc. etc), but since the kids were quite young when we did this unit, I don’t have anything currently on Ancient Greece.

You might be interested in this packet:

• World Facts Packet: Do your kids know the 4 largest countries? Which countries have the most people? The longest river? This packet covers basic world and U.S. facts.

That about sums it up for this post. See you again soon here or over at our Homeschool Den Facebook Page! Don’t forget to Subscribe to our Homeschool Den Newsletter. ~Liesl

Disclosure:  Please note that some of the links above are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase.