big history project
Jan. 16th, 2012 12:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ljgeoffFor the people new to me, I homeschool my youngest son, Luke. He's 11 years old, a bright kid, but really struggles with both reading and writing.
For the last month, we've been working pretty exclusively on algebraic word problems. And we're both getting bored, so today we're starting a new project -- History.
We're going to make a long time-line on butcher paper, the length of his room. We're going to focus on history of the Americas, but we'll throw in other bits, for perspective. I'm thinking that we'll start at around 6000 BCE.
I think that we'll start with marking the formation and demise of cultures/political groups/city states of North America -- the arctic, the subarctic, the northeast, the southeast, the plains, the southwest, the great Basin, California, the northwest coast and the plateau.
We'll also look at mesoamerica (orange), midamerica (light green), Caribbean (yellow), Amazon (red) and Andes (tan.)
I'm not going to even try for inclusiveness. I think that what we'll do is draw a timeline, and on the upper timeline make colored bars of up to 10 layers of cultures.
On the underside of the timeline, we'll have cultures of the other continents -- Sumerian, Zhou Dynasty, Aurignacian, Greco-Roman, Kanem Empire -- etc.
Luke wants to pinpoint (ala Civ IV's Big Picture) when different civilizations developed different technologies. To work on his reading and writing, we'll make a series of picture books.
The timeline will be 4 m long, and each meter will represent 2000 yrs.
For the last month, we've been working pretty exclusively on algebraic word problems. And we're both getting bored, so today we're starting a new project -- History.
We're going to make a long time-line on butcher paper, the length of his room. We're going to focus on history of the Americas, but we'll throw in other bits, for perspective. I'm thinking that we'll start at around 6000 BCE.
I think that we'll start with marking the formation and demise of cultures/political groups/city states of North America -- the arctic, the subarctic, the northeast, the southeast, the plains, the southwest, the great Basin, California, the northwest coast and the plateau.
We'll also look at mesoamerica (orange), midamerica (light green), Caribbean (yellow), Amazon (red) and Andes (tan.)
I'm not going to even try for inclusiveness. I think that what we'll do is draw a timeline, and on the upper timeline make colored bars of up to 10 layers of cultures.
On the underside of the timeline, we'll have cultures of the other continents -- Sumerian, Zhou Dynasty, Aurignacian, Greco-Roman, Kanem Empire -- etc.
Luke wants to pinpoint (ala Civ IV's Big Picture) when different civilizations developed different technologies. To work on his reading and writing, we'll make a series of picture books.
The timeline will be 4 m long, and each meter will represent 2000 yrs.