Tonight's Homework.

Today in class we reviewed Alexander the Great's expansion of the Greek empire by conquering lands from Greece to India. One of the first places conquered by Alexander the Great was Persia. This week we will be taking a side step from Greece to learn a bit about Persia. Today in class we read "The Persian Press". It is in the format of a small newspaper that was "published" in 486 BCE.

 On the last page of the news letter are 4 "Questions for Review" that students are to answer for homework on the lined paper I provided them in class (any lined paper will do).

 Here is some vocabulary that may be useful as they read this assignment.


Administration
A method of managing a group’s business
Canal
A ditch or channel in which water flows; used for both irrigation and boat transport
Citadel
A strongly fortified building or fort used for military defense and protection
Coinage
Money in the form of coins
Culture
The shared way of life of a group of people
Daric
A gold coin used in the Persian empire
Rebel (verb)
To rise up against political authority, usually with violence
Revenge
Action taken to pay back or retaliate against someone who has caused an offense or injury
Satrap
Governor appointed by the emperor of a province in the Persian empire
Shekel
A unit of currency, often a silver coin; still used in Israel today
Silk roads
A set of trade routes that crossed Inner Eurasia and that connected Europe, the Mediterranean, Southwest Asia, India, and China

a fun egypt website.

http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/MUS/ED/mummy.html

Ancient Civilizations Projects

Here are the projects we worked on today.  Each project should show a water source, some sort of shelter/protection, and a food source.  Additionally, it may show some of the other elements of a civilization such as religion or government.

2012 Ancient Civilizations Projects - slideshows

Projects

We are wrapping up our Unit on Ancient Civilizations. Today, students worked in groups to create an ancient civilization. We have identified different ideas that were common to all of the civilizations we studied (Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China). All of them were founded on fertile land near river. They all established some sort of religion and written language. Also, they all developed a form of government and a social structure. The first project was started today. They formed their groups and started to plan a model of their own ancient civilization. Tomorrow they will be creating their models, so they might be asking to bring some materials to school today. I will have plenty of construction paper, as well glue sticks and markers. I am very excited about some of the plans I saw that clearly showed they understand what a civilization might look like. On Monday, we will be doing the second project, which will be letter to a neighboring kingdom that describes what the religion, social order, and government are like. They will then create their own pictograph language that transcribes the letter they have written. Both of these projects are to be completed entirely in class.

The Hebrews

Today we read about Judaism, which developed around 1800 BCE in Mesopotamia.  We read a short story about how Hebrews(Jews) believe Abraham started their religion.  Then we did some fill in notes from the Mr. Dowling site http://mrdowling.com/603-hebrews.html.  We then used our Atlas of World History to map some of the movements of the Hebrew people.

This week's homework is to create a stick figure cartoon that shows the beginnings of Judaism based on our reading "The Origins of Judaism.  I will go into fuller detail on Wednesday and this will be due on Friday.

Mesopotamia

We are starting to learn about Mesopotamia, the Fertile Crescent, and the first civilizations.  Here is a link that is interesting for additional information about this ancient region.

http://www.mesopotamia.co.uk/menu.html

Cave Paintings

One of the things we discussed in class today was cave paintings.  This is a very cool site that takes the viewer on a virtual tour of caves discovered in France in the 1940s. We looked at it briefly in class, but I thought it would be better for the kids to take some time to look at it on their own.


 http://www.lascaux.culture.fr/#/fr/00.xml

Early Humans

Today we used fill in notes to discuss the history of humans.We started with Lucy, the oldest, discovered hominid. We briefly discussed the difference between fossils and artifacts. Then, we moved on to Stone Age hunter/gatherers and tool makers, finding fire, making fire and the benefits of having fire.

Wednesday, we will continue the discussion of the development of humans.

Pangea

On Friday, we looked at the shape of the continents and noticed how they might fit together. Students cut out shapes of the continents (as well as a few other major regions) and created a poster of how the Earth's land masses are arranged now, and how they were arranged 200 million years ago as PANGEA. This video clip from the Ice Age creators offers a funny, alternative version of what broke apart Pangea and set the Earth's land masses in motion. We will be learning the more accurate, scientific version of how the earth has changed over the next couple of weeks in science, so we will not be spending much time on it in Social Studies class.