Story of the World

I decided a while back that I wanted to add to our curriculum. I am very interested in history and wanted to make it fun but also keep it age-appropriate. I don't think 6 year olds have much of sense of time, especially C., who usually doesn't know what day of the week it is, let alone the concept of thousands of years. But I think it is still fun to think about the way the world "used to be" and try to learn about it.

One of my biggest hang-ups about teaching history is the question "Who's history?" In other words, from whose point of view do we teach our children about history, and of course, there's also "her-story" that needs to be told and is left out of about 99% of curriculum materials. So rather than overthink it to death, I decided just to start out with the basics, skip what didn't work for us, and add whatever needs to be added. I bought some materials called The Story of the World and started with "The Ancient World."

The first chapter starts with a story about the nomads in the area of the Fertile Crescent. It presents very basic information with ideas for a few crafts. C. LOVED it! She actually created her version of nomadic clothes and insisted on pretending to be a nomad for a few days, much to G.'s chagrin, who would have been much happier to be a superhero or puppy. We made cave paintings on crumpled up shopping bags, created a little cave and pretended to eat berries and lizards.
Carmella in her nomadic clothes doing a nomadic dance.
Carmella with one of her cave paintings. (Notice G. being quite bored and put-out by it all on the chair. I intentionally cropped his p.o.'ed facial expression.)


We have now started with Ancient Eygypt, which C. seems to be excited about. She is especially looking forward to the big activity from the book - making a real mummified chicken. Feel free to let me know if you want to help out with this one...