You could tell some of the kids were getting a little discouraged that the wheel of time always seemed to land in Ancient History. I personally love ancient history and so I'm alright that 4400 years out of the 7000 on the wheel are yellow (depicting ancient time period).
We studied 4th Century BC this week - just a century before of what we had studied two weeks ago. It was kind of interesting to go back to add the details of what happened before - rather than teaching chronologically. But I'm convinced that this approach has brought about so many interesting insights and elevated perspectives from history that I'd never noticed in a chronological approach, that I'm grateful I'm offering it to my children, as well as the other students. The focal highlights I picked this time include:
Socrates - Funny thing is, I had just finished reading Plato's Trial and Death of Socrates the prior week in my Great Books class. It really opened up my understanding personally of these great minds.
Plato -Socrates student and Aristotles Mentor
Aristotle - Ironically, Alexander the Great's Mentor
Euclid - Associates with the great minds of Athens. I put a sign above the door which read "Let no one ignorant of Geometry enter Here"
Alexander the Great - The kids liked the story of Beucephalus being afraid of his shadow.
Pharos Lighthouse - One of the 7 wonders of the ancient world
Book of Jarom - If I can find the exact centuries in the scriptures, I want to include them to correlate the histories.
Since most all of the century focused mostly on the great minds and philosophy of Athens, and even the spread of those ideas through Alexander, I decided to set up the classroom as Athens, Greece. I set up a table of wares for sale at the open market, even buying foods that they would have eaten in Athens (grapes, goat milk, ww bread, figs, dates, olives-which I actually forgot to bring-, fish, & goat cheese. We discussed what home life was like and what the children did in Athens and how their schools taught them. We briefly talked about the temples built to the Greek Gods and Greek mythology. How the men spent their days in discussion of philosophy and debate. How the Athenian government (true democracy) differed from what we claim as a democracy. How their courtroom operated - relating the trial and death of Socrates. And how they drew in the sand and thought, and thought, and thought. I'm not sure it came across as powerfully as I had envisioned it, but I think it went alright. At least it broke up what seemed to be a developing monotony.
