Ancient Greece Homeschool Unit
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We recently had the opportunity to review the Project Passport World History Studies: Ancient Greece by Home School in the Woods. Ancient Greece has been a topic of conversation in our home for many moons now. Incorporating an Ancient Greece homeschool unit has been so much fun.
Ancient Greece has been a topic of conversation in our home for many moons now. My eldest son discovered a love for the topic of Greek Gods through reading the Percy Jackson book series and has continued to look into the culture that surrounds the ancient Greek world.
Ancient Greece Homeschool Unit
When I learned of our opportunity to review the Project Passport World History Studies: Ancient Greece by Home School in the Woods, I was very excited.
Before this opportunity, our learning of Ancient Greece consisted of books we borrowed from the library and documentaries we found online. I knew there were a lot more topics to explore than we had discovered.
We were so excited to see that one of the projects was to build your own Parthenon!
Ancient Greece Projects
There is so much information presented in this product. In addition to the product itself, they also suggest many other resources including books and videos.
I was very overwhelmed when I first opened this product. There are over 250 PDF files! There are 25 stops on the travel itinerary with lots of information within each stop.
Where To Start?
When you open the unzipped file, there is a file called “Start”. Don’t get overwhelmed by the rest, just start there.
Each lesson is called a “stop” on the travel itinerary. From learning about everyday life to the Parthenon, from farming to maps. This product covers a wider variety of topics and information.
You can follow the itinerary stop by stop, or you can pick and choose what you would like to learn about.
The planned itinerary suggests using it over a 6-12 week period of time. Because we prefer to learn based on interests and loves at the moment, we pick and chose what topics sparked interest at the moment.
The projects we chose to work on were:
One issue I had with the product was the PDFs.
The projects are divided into many different, single page, PDFs. We do our printing at our local library and to print each page separate this took up an excessive amount of time. Not only did I have to print each page individually but, because of our library system, I also had to sign in to print each file and confirm to print each file. If entire topics been combined into one PDF, it would have been a lot easier to print. I also, accidentally, missed some PDFs when printing. Of course, I didn’t realize this until we were home and working on the project. It would have been nice for Home School in the Woods to combine all the different printables per lesson for this ancient Greece homeschool unit into one PDF.
This issue will become apparent when I share our experience with the Parthenon.
If we were using this product start to finish, I would have liked to see a single PDF so I could print out the entire Ancient Greece homeschool unit with one single click. It is nice to be able to pick and choose different stops, but I do not understand why each stop wasn’t formated as one file.
Greek Gods
Our love for ancient Greece was sparked by an interest in Greek Gods (or immortals as this product calls them). Posideon and Zeus are two of our favourites. We have studied Greek Gods in great detail and we were excited to see what other information this product would provide for us.
My disappointment with this topic is quite high.
Dionysus, Pandora, Eos, and Helios and Patheon are discussed in small little snippets of information. The major Greek Gods are barely mentioned in the small stories but were widely ignored.
Zeus, Posideon, Hades, Apollo, Ares, Hermes… What happened to all of these very important figures in Ancient Greek life?
Religion was so important to ancient Greeks and I think that Home School in the Woods missed the mark in a big way by leaving out this important aspect of life.
They do not even include Athena in this section, despite there being a statue to Athena in the Parthenon. Athena is the patron saint of Athens and the Parthenon was dedicated to her. It seems like a major oversight to have not included this information.
A Missed Opportunity
Look at this wonderful project included for the Great Greeks of… They share a picture as well as information about all sorts of important people who lived in ancient Greece.
This format would have been amazing to use again for the Greek Gods. We would have loved to create this style project for the Greek Gods.
In fact, I am working on creating my own version of this style project for the Greek Gods as supplementation for our learning. While this product did not have this information, it at least inspired us to learn more.
The Parthenon
The Parthenon was a highly anticipated part of this ancient Greece homeschool unit.
We had seen videos and pictures about the Parthenon and were excited to be able to create a model of our own. I saved all of the files for this stop and off to the library we went. Before leaving, I did not read the Souvenir Craft Card. The other Souvenir Craft Cards I looked at were just instructions and extra materials needed, so I assumed this one was the same. I had my list of files to print…
Souvenir Craft Card: “The Parthenon” M-19-8: Souvenir Craft Card – The Parthenon 1 M-19-9: Souvenir Craft Card – The Parthenon 2 M-19-10: The Parthenon – Floor M-19-11: The Parthenon – Walls, Frieze Strips, Athena & Support M-19-12: The Parthenon – Template for Roof Base M-19-13: The Parthenon – Facts Page M-19-14: The Parthenon – Outer Columns M-19-15: The Parthenon – Roof and Peak Decorations M-19-16: The Parthenon – Double Columns and Ceiling M-19-17: The Parthenon – Pediments and Metropes |
Well, I was wrong.
We had all the supplies that we needed to start, including foam board and a variety of adhesives. On a rainy day, we sat down and spent hours working on our Parthenon.
Midway through assembling our Parthenon, I realized we were about 40 columns short for our building. I was supposed to print off four copies of the one file, which I did not realize.
To improvise, we decided that we would just cut blank pieces of paper to match the size of the column. After attempting to secure the few columns we did have, we decided that our Parthenon was not working as we had hoped. We decided we were satisfied with Parthenon ruins.
If you are going to make your own Parthenon, I would suggest using hot glue to secure the columns. White glue did not work for us.
Home School in the Woods
In the end, we did enjoy our ancient Greece homeschool unit using the Project Passport World History Studies: Ancient Greece by Home School in the Woods. Even though I have some criticism of this product, I think they presented the information in a fun and entertaining way.
If you want to see reviews for other Home School in the Woods products, click on the image below.
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