I was anxious to begin studying the time period the wheel of time landed on - 300 BC - so I could make preparations and be ready for the next week. I thumbed through our history encyclopedias and at first thought all I could find was Alexander the Great. So I envisioned a craft and something else to entertain the kids. But as I continued to research my resources, I realized my understanding was inaccurate. The 3rd Century BC actually is 201 BC through 300 BC and Alexander was in the 4th Century BC. So I changed my search parameters and was deciding what to filter out and what to focus on. Needless to say, I was having great difficulty. Everything thing I read was exciting and important. I couldn't decide if I wanted to focus on only one or two aspects in that century and really create a relationship with the story - or do a broad and brief summary of a many stories so as to make connections between them. It seemed I was making this up as I went along even though I tried to plan everything out in the beginning.
When I was reading in the scriptures for my personal study and ran across what was happening in 300 BC in the Book of Mormon, it was so exciting to connect that with secular history that I decided to go broad. I made little pictures representing the stories along with dates to place in their timelines. During class, I pointed to the place on the map and explained briefly what was going on their during that time. This is what I came up with for the 3rd Century BC.
The Book of Omni - America
Asoka the Great - India
Ptolomy Dynasty - Egypt
Punic Wars - Rome and Carthage
Qin Shi Huangdi - China
Archimedes & Erastothenes- Greece
I brought along modeling clay for the kids to mold like the terra cotta army as I told them the stories, and coloring pages of Hannibal crossing the Alps. I was intending to do a simulation but was afraid I wouldn't have enough time to get through all the stories.
Some of the kids had difficulty gluing the pictures in the correct places in their timeline and others seemed to not even care about gluing them into the timeline at all - but a few caught on and hopefully will make memories with the stories.
To spin the wheel, I had all the kids stand in a circle around the wheel and explained that we neededall of their energy in order to travel back in time. They all neededto make a movement and a sound as we all became part of the time machine as we spun it. I could tell that some of the kids thought it was retarded but I made them participate anyway.
All in all, the 2nd week was much better and encouraging.
