Ancient greece help please

[sweetsouthern]

Dd started using mystery of history for history this year and has fallen in love with ancient greece. So we have decidec to stop here and come up with our own unit study for a while . So far she has read the iliad and is starting the odyssey. She is going to write a report on medusa. She gas concered reading the percy jackson series, but is on the fence since there a bit younger for her reading level. Any ideas of what else we could do, read, or even a curriculum or unit study thats geared for just this time period?? Thanks so much for any ideas!

[regentrude]

I highly recommend the Teaching Company lectures by Dr. Vandiver. She has the following series:

Iliad (12 lectures), Odyssey( 12), Aeneid (12), Classical Mythology (24), Greek Tragedy (24), Herodotus (12)

We love her lectures; they are a good level for a high school student, and the understanding and cultural background we have gotten from them has helped us tremendously in our study of Ancients.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

Lukeion has a one semester class in Greek literature in translation. It includes a couple of plays, poetry and epics. Dr Fisher taught the Latin 1 class my kids took and was great.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

Dp

[Slache]

I don't know how old she is but TruthQuest has one on ancient Greece.

[Maureen]

I second the Vandiver lectures.  They are fabulous!  My girls and I have listened to them all.  We are currently finishing up with Greek Tragedy and Herodotus.  We have learned so much.  We just watched a stage production of Agamemnon that we found on Youtube today since we just listened to the lecture on Agamemnon.  My girls are very familiar with the material from the Iliad and her lectures on Greek Mythology.  I also had them read the material about Agamemnon from shmoop.com before they watched the video.  I had shmoop's plot points printed out to help us follow along as we watched the play.  Greek tragedy was meant to be watched just like Shakespeare.  It's not the same simply reading it.  We've also watched some videos we've found on Netflix of Jason and the Argonauts, the Odyssey, etc., which we watch after we've read and then listened to her lectures so we can judge how faithful the movies are.  Medea from Netflix is sitting by our DVD player right now waiting to be watched!  Hope you enjoy Ancient Greece as much as we have.

[chiguirre]

I'll third the Vandiver recommendation. I didn't use it with a student (yet) but I listened to all of them and loved them for myself. You might want to take a look at Kolbe's history and lit reading lists for the Greeks:

 

http://www.kolbe.org/academics/curriculum-grade-level/high-school/literature-curriculum/

 

http://www.kolbe.org/academics/curriculum-grade-level/high-school/history-curriculum/

 

You'll be able to find free online study guides for all the works they cover so you can create your own class. You might want to mix and match with their Roman history and lit for an Ancient history year.

[shawthorne44]

The plays are really cool.  I loved them as a teenager.  

Once I got into them more I learned that some of them are only known about because the backside of the pages were used in Egypt for things like inventories.  So, we can only guess what happens in parts of them because a mistake had been made and the Egyptian tossed that page.  

"The Clouds" is probably OK for high school, although it has sexual content.  I think the insight into Socrates makes it worth it.  

[JumpedIntoTheDeepEndFirst]

One warning-the Vandiver lectures do cover ancient literature in its fullest.  To include all the of the juicy bits-violence and s*x.  If this is a concern of yours you may want to preview them.  It is a great course and I can only add to everyone else's recommendations.  You might also consider the Teaching Company lectures Famous Greeks by Fears-they are also wonderful.

 

I wouldn't not consider Percy Jackson to be appropriate for a high school history course. 

 

Also, Lukeion Project is offering several one week seminars that include ancient Greek history and literature over the summer (mostly in June and July I believe).  They are lots of fun and would make a great component of any social studies course on the ancients.

 

 

[A home for their hearts]

Reviving this thread and hyjacking it for a moment.  We will be studying ancient greece and reading the iliad and the odyssey as well.  For those who have watched all of the TC lectures by Dr.Vandiver, how would you suggest I schedule these?  I will also be adding in the course on ancient Greece and possibly Famoud Greeks.

[Vida Winter]

Reviving this thread and hyjacking it for a moment.  We will be studying ancient greece and reading the iliad and the odyssey as well.  For those who have watched all of the TC lectures by Dr.Vandiver, how would you suggest I schedule these?  I will also be adding in the course on ancient Greece and possibly Famoud Greeks.

 

If you buy the Vandiver lectures from TC you can get the guidebook. She lists "recommended reading" for each lecture which corresponds to which books of the Iliad or Odyssey you should read for that lecture. For the Iliad it is roughly 3 books per lecture but sometimes it varies. Famous Greeks by Dr. Fears is also very well done but for that I'd simply watch the lectures in order, perhaps 2x per week.