Looking for hands' on activities for ancient rome

[pjssully]

Hi,  

I will be doing ancient rome with 11 year old boys next year and looking for some hands on ideas or books that might be fun.

Any ideas or books would be greatly appreciated!!

pam

[SilverMoon]

The Art of the Catapult!

[Arcadia]

If your boys are interested in woodwork, they can built their own catapult.

Instructions and the physics behind it from Open U

http://www.open.edu/openlearn/files/ole/open2files/catapult_download.pdf

Information about catapult, 46 pages PDF with nice illustrations

http://www.tcd.ie/mecheng/assets/Mangonel/TheProjecileThrowingEnginesOfTheAncients.pdf

We did lego buildings of aqueduct, pantheon and the colosseum for fun too.

[Farrar]

We made a small scale model of a Roman Road in a cheap tin pan using real materials and a similar process of layering. It was shockingly sturdy. The playmobil Romans really liked it.

 

Also, look and see if there are any Roman re-enactor groups. They're like the people who re-enact Civil War battles, but for Rome. They're fun to watch if they do an event.

[Farrar]

Oh, and we also built a model of an aquifer, but my kids were little at the time and it was really simple - cereal boxes with paper towel rolls with plastic wrap mostly, but for older kids you could work with some angles. And you could also do some stuff with arches.

 

We also did a "day at the baths" where we steamed the bathroom and sat around reading and eating Roman foods and then my boys wrestled and bathed and there were oils and it was pretty weird, but I'm telling you, they still talk about it.