FIFTH GRADE ANCIENT CIVILIZATION ACTIVITIES
Compiled by Janet Langley
Ancient India
1. Make a 3-D map of India constructed, painted and labeled by the
students in teams.
2. Have an Indian food feast.
3. Present the 4 castes, then have each student choose the one s/he
would like to be and discuss why.
4. Invite Buddhist monks or followers of the Buddhist faith to visit the
classroom and talk about life in an ashram, etc.
5. Design and construct a colored sand mandala, then have a “release”
ceremony and gently brush it away.
6. Present the Buddha’s 8-fold path then ask each student to select one
of the “deeds” and write about when s/he or someone else followed
that path.
7. Have each student choose one of the 8 fold path dictates and adopt it
for a week. After trying to follow that path for a week, write about
his/her experience.
8. Guide students in the making of a clay model of Ganesh as a present
for their homes
9. Act out one of the scene’s from the Ramayana.
10. Invite a yoga teacher class and ask him/her to lead the class in some
basic yoga and relaxation techniques- if possible, do this as your warm
up/movement activity every morning during the block.
11. Incorporate Lloyd Alexander’s book The Iron Ring into the block,
either by reading it to the students during free times or as a reader.
Ancient Persia
1. Have an animal trainer come in and talk about what it takes to
domesticate a wild animal (their specialty…dogs/horses, etc.).
2. If possible, locate someone from Iran who can come in and talk about
their country and its culture. If they are followers of the religion
based on Zarathustra (Farsi?) ask them to share some of their
beliefs.
Ancient Mesopotamia
1. Make clay bricks and build a small Ziggurat.
2. Read Gilgamesh as either a class reader or as a story you read to
them.
3. Make clay tablets and then copy some cuneiform writing (their
names?) onto the tablets by etching with a potter’s tool.
Ancient Egypt
1. Use the Golden Goblet as a class reader.
2. Make papyrus paper.
3. Take a field trip to the Rosicrucian Museum in San Jose (We stayed
overnight at the Sanborne Hostel).
4. Draw an Egyptian map with illustrations of various famous sites- such
as the 3 pyramids at Giza.
5. Learn how to measure an area using the “rope stretcher” methods
used to measure land in Egypt after the yearly floods.
6. Ancient Civilization Artistic Project (see description in this section)
7. Have a curriculum evening for family and friends where you share
speech work, projects from #6, Indian food, songs, etc. from the
first two history blocks.
8. Copying a real mural segment, paint a “tomb” mural on the classroom
wall.
9. Bring in photographs of the contents of Ramses II or King Tut’s
tombs- tell the story of Carter’s discovery of Kin Tut’s tomb.
10. Copy an Egyptian papyrus painting.
11. Study the evolution of hieroglyphs from pictures to symbols, have
students create their own alphabet- have them put this in their main
lesson book along with a written passage for others to decipher.
12. Tell the story about the discovery of the Rosetta stone and its
significance.
13. Draw the “Eye of Horus” on black paper with chalk.
Ancient Crete and Greece
1. Make a maze with hay bales or visit a corn field maze.
2. Select either life as a Spartan or an Athenian and write a journal
entry about your daily life.
3. Use Lloyd Alexander’s The Arkadians as a class reader.
4. Read Rosemary Sutcliff’s Black Sails Over Troy, Padriac Colum’s A
Children’s Odessey, or Colum’s The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who
Lived Before Achilles to the students (or use as a reader).
5. Have students write their own creation story. (They’ve heard a bunch
of them by now!)
6. Greek artistic project- choose some aspect of Greek culture to
create- this could be a piano piece, a model of the Parthenon, a play, a
Greek costume, a Greek theatre mask, a model of a Greek vase, etc.
7. Hold another curriculum evening to share the fruits of the block.
8. Design a Pentathlon training course (circuit course) for the students
to do each morning- I did this at the beginning of the year and it was
their morning movement activity- it took 15 minutes to complete
including moving from one activity to another. The activities included
sit ups, push ups, running up stairs, step exercise, weights, jumping
rope, balance activities, juggling, etc.
9. Write an Ode to a God or Goddess asking him/her to help you as you
attempt the Pentathlon events (see examples below).
Note: One of the traditions at our area Pentathlon is that each class
selects one student’s ode to be read by that student during the opening
ceremonies. I had the class select what they considered the 5 best
essays and then asked the 8th grade to choose the one to be read aloudthey had no idea who wrote what.
10. Organize or attend a Pentathlon with other 5th grades in the region.
11. Learn the Greek alphabet.
12. Study the many Greek words that we use today or are the roots of
our language- give a root, its meaning and then have the students come
up with as many “English” words as they can that is related to that
root.
13. Learn the beginning of the Odyssey in Greek.
14. Choose a Greek God or Goddess to illustrate, then write a poem about
him/her.
15. Practice using the Athenian method of voting when working on a class
problem (could use white/black stones or shards of pottery).
16. Draw a map of Alexander’s journey- you will discover that it retraces
the curriculum journey that you have taken from Greece to Egypt,
Babylon, and India!
Ideas for 5th grade reviews/assignments:
1. Use removable names/labels on maps so that you can remove them and
have students replace them.
2. Review the story by proper nouns, nouns or verbs- as they appear
chronologically.
3. Write out a summary of the story leaving blanks and have the
students fill in the blanks (you can choose to provide possible answers
in a list or not).
4. Divide the class into small groups- give each group part of the story to
act out- give them a basket full of possible props to use and 10
minutes to come up with their part- act it out.
5. “Around the World” – Have a number of questions about the lesson
the day before (at least 50% more than you have students).
6. Ask the students to write review questions- what s/he thought was an
important part of the lesson- ask the class the ?s.
Copyright 1997 by Janet Langley