History games and activities

Teens often enjoy working on mixed media projects because of the variety of techniques involved. This unique and stunning Egyptian portrait is a great example of mixed media. By using Paper-Mache, cardboard, and a balloon, they can design their own Greek vase. After it dries and hardens, kids can use acrylic paints to make their project look like authentic Greek pottery. We worked on a Colonial Teapot kit when we studied early American history and loved it!

Let your kids experience what was involved in the mummification process by letting them mummify an action figure or even a whole chicken. Take some time to prepare some of the foods that were common back in ancient times. Here are some ideas for a Greek feast. With older kids, give them some experience in the kitchen by letting do the preparation.

If your middle schoolers want nothing to do with hands-on projects, but you want to include something interactive in their history studies, consider letting them build in Minecraft. That really makes me sound a lot more courageous or patient or saintly or whatever word you want to throw in there that people might use to positively describe a…. Our all-time favorite hands-on history project was a Medieval Feast we had while learning about the Medieval Ages.

The kids studied the duties of the servants and entertainers abd chose one of each to portray at our feast. We then cooked period dishes, served them in trenchers, and had the guests eat with their hands Fun!! It was great fun and educational.

My daughter still occasionally makes wassail to this day! The kids and I are currently making a letterbox letterboxing. Costumes is one of my favorites. I saw this in my Pinterest feed so hopped over to link up a list of creative ways to learn geography, too! We share many! And the costume idea is great! Love these activities and ideas. We love history and geography any old way you serve it up and hands-on just makes it better. Thanks for linking to my South America map and sharing!

These are really great ideas. Making it fun to learn definitely builds interest and encourages the desire to learn more. I especially like item 7, become a flat traveler. It is nice that today, we have the History Channel. I would think watching one of the episodes and then relating that to the location on an atlas or map would make it more interesting.

My tween had a lot of fun with these two American Revolution hands-on activities. She loved using her American Girl dolls as part of school, so she especially enjoyed creating the historical silhouette. One of our absolute favorite activity was this American Revolution artifact project.

Abigail made a teapot that was representative of those used in the s. Head west was the rallying cry of many after we became a nation. The colonies were getting crowded and people were looking for something more. They wanted to explore. So they packed up their wagons and headed west. These pioneer crafts were once functional tools used by the pioneers.

Tweens can make them as part of their history studies to get a better understanding of the life of the pioneers. In your homeschool, when you learn about the pioneers, this American Pioneer notebooking unit should be a part of your middle school lesson plan. It will make planning easy because kids can use it to direct their learning. Use these pioneer life activities with your middle schoolers to give them an idea what daily life was like for the early settlers.

Things like drawing a life-sized log cabin, making a quilt, and cooking some recipes will make tweens feel like they went back in time. Show tweens how difficult the journey was for the American pioneers by studying their mode of transportation — the covered wagon. There are 6 covered wagon activities to choose from. As you study the American Pioneers, use these Pioneer hands-on activities to engage your tweens.

They can cook an authentic pioneer meal, make a covered wagon, play some games, and more. The discovery of gold is what led so many individuals to California.

Classical Greece saw the world's first experiment with democracy in Athens. Major events included the Peloponnesian Wars. The hellenistic empire of Alexander the Great of Macedon and the kingdoms established by his successors changed the social and political landscape of the ancient world.

The ancient Romans are given the full treatment. Sections are divided into the establishment of the democratic Roman Republic, the Punic Wars, the civil war, the rise of the Roman Empire, and the barbarian invasions and migratory period in Europe which followed ancient Rome's collapse in C. The Byzantine Empire, or Eastern Roman Empire, grew in prominence as its sister empire to the west fell into ruin.

Particular emphasis is given to the famous Emperor Justinian. This empire lasted until it succumbed to the Ottoman Turks in , with the fall of Constantinople. Mohammed felt his religious calling, and proceeded to spread the ideas of Islam throughout the Arabian peninsula.

Within a few centuries, Islamic beliefs, along with powerful Muslim empires, had spread throughout the Middle East and northern Africa, and into parts of Europe. Medieval Europe is most commonly associated with knights, armor, chivalry, poverty, and ignorance. The marvels of Roman engineering were lost, only to be rediscovered during the Crusades, preserved and built upon by scholars of the Islamic world. The Renaissance lifted Europe out of the Middle Ages, socially, economically, intellectually, and politically.

The Medici and other powerful families dominated the city-states of Italy. The Scientific Revolution encompasses the explosion in scientific research and knowledge which grew out of the European Renaissance.

The sun was made the center of the galaxy, and the human body was explored to discover the workings of the circulatory system. Major scientists of this movement range from Copernicus and Galileo to Newton and Descartes. Global absolutism ruled the Western world.

The sun king and other world leaders ruled by divine right. Questioning the monarchy was blasphemy. How dare anyone question the person put into power by God. From the Magna Carta through the development of the monarch as a figurehead, England later Great Britain, then the United Kingdom has, despite ups and downs and flaws, led the leading nations of the world in establishing participatory democracy.

The laws of England greatly impacted both the common and constitutional law of the United States and other former colonies. The European Enlightenment saw the nature and structure of human societies called into question. Rather than kings ruling by divine right, natural laws prevailed. Human beings engaged in a social contract, exchanging rights for societal protections.