Ancient Crete and Greece

1. Make a maze with hay bales or visit a corn field maze.

2. Select either life as a Spartan or an Athenian and write a journal
entry about your daily life.

3. Use Lloyd Alexanders The Arkadians as a class reader.

4. Read Rosemary Sutcliffs Black Sails Over Troy, Padriac Colums A
Childrens Odessey, or Colums The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who
Lived Before Achilles to the students (or use as a reader).

5. Have students write their own creation story. (Theyve heard a bunch
of them by now!)

6. Greek artistic project- choose some aspect of Greek culture to
create- this could be a piano piece, a model of the Parthenon, a play, a
Greek costume, a Greek theatre mask, a model of a Greek vase, etc.

7. Hold another curriculum evening to share the fruits of the block.

8. Design a Pentathlon training course (circuit course) for the students
to do each morning- I did this at the beginning of the year and it was
their morning movement activity- it took 15 minutes to complete
including moving from one activity to another. The activities included
sit ups, push ups, running up stairs, step exercise, weights, jumping
rope, balance activities, juggling, etc.

9. Write an Ode to a God or Goddess asking him/her to help you as you
attempt the Pentathlon events (see examples below).

Note: One of the traditions at our area Pentathlon is that each class
selects one students ode to be read by that student during the opening
ceremonies. I had the class select what they considered the 5 best
essays and then asked the 8
th
grade to choose the one to be read aloud-
they had no idea who wrote what.

10. Organize or attend a Pentathlon with other 5
th
grades in the region.

11. Learn the Greek alphabet.

12. Study the many Greek words that we use today or are the roots of
our language- give a root, its meaning and then have the students come
up with as many English words as they can that is related to that
root.

13. Learn the beginning of the Odyssey in Greek.

14. Choose a Greek God or Goddess to illustrate, then write a poem about
him/her.

15. Practice using the Athenian method of voting when working on a class
problem (could use white/black stones or shards of pottery).

16. Draw a map of Alexanders journey- you will discover that it retraces
the curriculum journey that you have taken from Greece to Egypt,
Babylon, and India!

Ideas for 5th grade reviews/assignments:

1. Use removable names/labels on maps so that you can remove them and
have students replace them.
2. Review the story by proper nouns, nouns or verbs- as they appear
chronologically.
3. Write out a summary of the story leaving blanks and have the
students fill in the blanks (you can choose to provide possible answers
in a list or not).
4. Divide the class into small groups- give each group part of the story to
act out- give them a basket full of possible props to use and 10
minutes to come up with their part- act it out.
5. Around the World Have a number of questions about the lesson
the day before (at least 50% more than you have students).
6. Ask the students to write review questions- what s/he thought was an
important part of the lesson- ask the class the ?s.