Customer Reviews

Classical Kids: An Activity Guide to Life in Ancient Greece and Rome (A Kid's Guide series)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Our family used this book in our homeschooling, while studying Greece and Rome. Full of easy, hands-on projects which jump-started our kids' imaginations and made the ancient world come alive in their eyes.

They made costumes, crafts, even complete Roman and Greek meals! Our family's favorite dish was the Greek spinach triangles (for which we've had repeat requests).

Really broke up the routine of school in a creative way.

This is a must have book. The projects are easy, usually with things you have around the house. But the simple, one or two paragraph historical perspective offered about the activity is great for a 5 year old or 18 year old. The Greek and Roman recipes were super and we've kept them on our weekly schedules even though we've moved on to the Middle Ages now. Enjoy this book. You may have lots of crafts and activity books around the house (we do), but you'll do over 75% of these.

We prefer a literature approach to homeschooling, but also love books like this that bring in creative hands-on activities. Our preferred history spine for Ancient cultures is "Our Young Folks' Josephus" which not only covers Israel, but also all the cultures that affect her including Greece and Rome. "Classical Kids" is a great addition to our homeschool. It includes fun crafts that reflect ancient Greek and Roman arts, as well as great science projects. Along with "Archimedes and the Door of Science" and "Galen and the Gateway to Medicine" it is a wonderful part of our ancient history studies.

Our family used this book in our homeschooling, while studying Greece and Rome. Full of easy, hands-on projects which jump-started our kids' imaginations and made the ancient world come alive in their eyes.

They made costumes, crafts, even complete Roman and Greek meals!

Really broke up the routine of school in a creative way.

There are lots of great ideas in this book to really get inside how the ancient Greeks and Romans lived, but what I liked best was the science and math experiements to learn about the advances in math by Archimedes, Pythagoras, and the other scientists. This is really helping us tie together our history and science studies.

This book has loads of great activities to enhance study of the ancients. Activities require only standard items found around the house and have very understandable instructions.

I have a love/hate homeschool crafts. I am always skeptical of craft books mainly because my kids either can't get their crafts to look like the ones in the books, or they can but it takes a lot of work on my part. But I try a new one about once a year and I'm glad this was one of the ones. It was worth it.

We liked the Egyptian craft book made in this same series, but this one is even more encyclopedic. I was not expecting a hundred crafts ideas! One things that's nice is that they are basically organized by theme: cooking, art, science/math, costumes. This made it easier to skim through and select (or ignore). My kids were each able to pick at least several they could do, which matched their ages (4 through 11), gender, and personalities. I would say that this is probably an appropriate age range--middle schoolers will probably find these too dumb.

Most of the crafts did not require a lot of effort or resources on my part. The two-page spread on each can make the difficulty kind of deceiving, however (i.e. creating a planetary model takes MUCH more effort than photocopying and assembling an octahedron pattern). And I would have appreciated slightly more details and steps--the illustrations are kind of kindergartnerish. But the diversity of crafts is really great and I agree with the reviewer who commended the extra math and science concept crafts. Some activities were kind of a stretch but the author clearly made an effort to include more well-rounded subject matter rather than the standard "create a toga out of a sheet."

Bottom line: It's not a necessary addition, but can spice up a lesson, especially for a younger elementary kid.

Absolutely boring...my students laughed at some of the suggestions. I just had to return it. My sixth graders would have done a far better job writing this book than the author. It wasn't worth the restocking fee either!