Have you ever wondered what it was like to live in Ancient Greece? Check out my Groovy Greeks Unit Study to find out and learn some groovy facts (like why dedicated doctors tasted their patients’ ear wax) along the way!
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Groovy Greeks {Horrible Histories} by Terry Deary
In Groovy Greeks Terry Deary teaches us all about Greek Gods, groovy eats, and who had the world’s first flushing toilet!
Suggested Schedule
We try to have a light workload on Fridays, so we read the entire book in just four days. This is the reading schedule we followed:
- 1st Day- Read pages 5-37
- 2nd Day- Read pages 38-69
- 3rd Day- Read pages 70-100
- 4th Day- Read pages 101-128
- 5th Day- Complete quiz on pages 129-132
If you are reading this book with younger students you may want to split the reading up over two weeks rather than one. My children are 11 and 13, and have no trouble sitting through our daily reading. As you can see on the 5th day we complete a final quiz. This is a great way to see how much your children have learned while reading, but Terry Deary doesn’t stop there! There are also multiple mini quizzes mixed into the reading. These pop quizzes add a little extra humor into the day and teach even more groovy facts (so don’t skip them)!
Extras…
This year I am using the whole Horrible Histories set with Julia and Jack as our core history curriculum. As I am sure you have already figured out these books are not a curriculum on their own, so I will be adding extra materials to our schedule to take our learning a step further. Want to join in on the fun? Here is everything I added in this week:
Books
In addition to Groovy Greeks, we also read:
- You Wouldn’t Want to be A Greek Athlete! by Michael Ford
- DK Eyewitness Books: Ancient Greece by Anne Pearson
- D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths by Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire
- Who Was Alexander the Great? by Kathryn Waterfield
- The Iliad (Classic Starts) by Homer retold by Kathleen Olmstead
Videos
This week we continued both of the documentaries we started during our Rotten Romans Unit Study. First up is Horrible Histories Season 1 Episode 6. You can buy the episodes individually on Amazon Video or purchase the whole season (this is what I did).
Then we watched Empire Games Season 1 Episode 2 on Netflix.
We finished the week with a fun family movie night and… Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lighting Thief!
Writing
We were introduced to The Iliad and the “Achilles’ heel” during this unit. As a journal prompt I asked the following question:
What is your “Achilles’ heel“, and how can you overcome this weakness?
If you have been following along with our homeschool journey you know that Jack has a number of learning disabilities. Writing essays is not something he is fully capable of yet, but I still have him participate in any of these writing prompts I give. I simply have him tell me his responses and I copy them down for him (together we work on writing proper sentences and using correct grammar). Then he uses these selections for copywork the following day. His response this week brought tears to my eyes. Here is a little peak:
My “Achilles’ heel” is my reading. It is very hard for me to read, but I keep trying. I think if I never give up and keep practicing one day I will be able to read on my own! Once I can read without help everything will be easier, but for now I have learned a few tricks. If I am on a computer or my tablet I can use Google to search for things. I can also have things read aloud to me by highlighting it and clicking “speech” and then “start speaking“.
Be still my mama heart…
It is so hard watching Jack struggle so much, and I am exhausted trying to teach him sometimes. However, I am extremely grateful for technology! Hopefully one day soon these struggles will be a thing of the past for my little man.
Thank you for checking out my Groovy Greeks Unit Study…
I hope these resources will be beneficial to all of you. We have already completed a few other Horrible Histories Unit Studies. Check them out:
Savage Stone Age
Awesome Egyptians
Rotten Romans
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