Where in Time is Ms. Amber? : Ancient Greece

As a woman who grew up in the 80s and 90s I LOVED to watch PBS and some of my favorite shows were Where in the World and Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?. So for the past few years I've been doing a geography club at the library. The first 2.5 years were dedicated to traveling the United States and then we spent 1.5 years traveling the world. Now that the geography club is over (for now) we are traveling through time in a class I call Where in Time is Ms. Amber?. 


Since this class is a new venture for me, I decided to change it up a bit. In the past, the Geography club was primarily lecture with a craft thrown in at the end. I would make study guides for the kids and there would be a big Geography Club versus the Librarians Geography Bee. I had been using that format for 4 years and the kids were getting bored with it. (Several of the kids have been with me since we started 4 years ago.) This new class will have stations around the room for the kids to interact with. After a brief overview of Ancient Greece (which included a clip from Disney's Hercules), I unleashed my 2 students to the stations in the room.

Station 1
God and Goddess Match Game (I found some really cool ancient Greek flash cards at Research Parent) I took the god/goddess descriptions, laminated them and glued them to a large sheet of Art paper. Then I laminated the god/goddess names and let the kids match the god/goddess to their description. The kids had a little difficulty matching a couple of them, but quickly fixed their mistake.

Station 2
Decorate a Grecian Urn
We found an old Oriental Trading paper vase craft in our craft drawers and I thought it would be perfect for Ancient Greece. I think we originally bought them for a Percy Jackson party and had several left over. Sadly, I ca no longer find the craft on Oriental Trading.

Station 3
Build a Lego Parthenon
This was probably the biggest hit in the class. By the time the kids were ready to work on the Parthenon, D's little brother C came in to build with us. I gave each of the kids a Lego building board and let them dig through the boxes of Lego to find the pieces they needed. We ended up with two partially built Parthenons by the time class ended, but they loved it!

Websites:

I chose to use the Greek Gods and Goddesses card to create a match game that my students really enjoyed.
Layerd Soul should us a really cool Lego Parthenon that I had kids attempt to build.
Statue of Colossus at Rhodes came from Ancient Awe.


Helpful Books:

Ancient Greece by Peter Ackroyd
Ancient Greek Women by Hadyn Middleton
Cultural Atlas for Young People: Ancient Greece by Dr. Anton Powell
Ancient Greece: 40 Hands-On Activities by Avery Hart and Paul Mantell


The new format of the class seemed to be a huge success. The kids who were able to make it had a blast and I'm not upset that it was a really small class. I'm pretty sure that had we not been closed for Hurricane Irma for almost a week the class would have been a bit bigger. (We ended up re-opening on the same day as the 1st Where in Time class.) Next week, we will have our first STEAM Travels class and that will be a nice little tie in to our Ancient Greece studies. We will be building edible Parthenons!

Love from Library Land,
Amber