This year we started something new. After organizing our school closet Chris was very unhappy with our lack of history curriculum. I hadn't found one I liked yet or a way to teach it that I agreed with. In PS (public school) kids are taught about themselves, their family, their neighborhood, etc on out to the rest of the world. They actually start from the very last thing to occur on a timeline of the world: themselves! Not my favorite way to start. As if my kids need more reasons to feel like the center of all life on earth. So we found a curriculum for history, for grade school, that starts at the beginning, but in a way that is simple and fun for kids to learn. It's called "the Story of the World" and my kids love it! We read a bit, we talk a bit, we color maps and use our big wall map, we color pictures, and we do projects.
Of course, to start at the beginning, we learned about nomads, and lands, but we really began when those nomads stopped moving. So we got to do our first project with the Egyptians on the Nile river. The kids loved all things Egyptian this week, like pyramids, mummies, pharaohs, etc.
To help the kids understand a bit more, we did a hands-on project. We built pyramids out of sugar cubes. The surprise? It ended up being a math lesson as well when they realized they needed to use squares for each level of the pyramid. It was so great to watch them figure it out all by themselves. When we were done I thought the first question would be where can we put it? But no! The first question was, "can we eat the blocks that are broken?" I let them have a few. I'm mom and I'm okay with a little sugar cube madness after a good day of classes.
They turned out great! I was so proud of them and how neat their pyramids looked. They had so much fun. I had never done this in school so I really enjoyed watching them do it.
Joe's is the top one. Eve's is the bottom one.
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