15 Ways to Teach History Like a Sailor
Mind and body / tradition and experience come together in this Integrated List of activities geared for young people (perhaps 12 or so) studying Ancient History. Make it come alive. (I will be adding and improving to this list as I figure out where I got some of the materials for the following.) For teachers the indispensable reading is Henri Marrou's History of Education in Antiquity and G. K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man.- Cuneiform: purchase clay, wedge-shaped sticks, and try to make cuneiform letters.
- Eat dates, pomegranates, figs, grapes. With great ceremony.
- Learn constellations with the free planetarium at http://www.stellarium.org/ and go star-gazing. Read selections from Bulfinch's Mythology to get the stories.
- Listen to Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. (Get it here) Tell the story.
- Make mosaics. Trace a design or picture on cardboard and fill in with chopped colored chipboard and glue. A long horizontal picture can be worked on if you have long table and can seat students on either side.
- Make wooden blocks for building arches. Help students to put them together aquaduct style or like a barrel-vault.
- Observe and draw pictures of Greco-Roman art.
- Papyrus: follow these directions for making papyrus sheets. Make a press with two pieces of wood and bolts. Obtain papyrus? Try a local university which has a biological science department.
- Read Aesop's Fables, color the black & white illustrations by Arthur Rackham (online here); tell them, and write your own.
- Rehearse and enact a battle.
- Teach Greek letters and write “code.”
- Tell the story of Demeter and Persephone, Antigone, Pysche and Eros.
- Write fables, narratives, and kreia. Here are directions.
- Write letters and speeches. Have students put themselves in the shoes of various characters and write something from their perspective, such a “Last Letter Home from Thermopylae.”
- Write riddles. (for example when studying Oedipus and the riddle of the Sphynx)
Or memorize these poems at appropriate times:
- Excerpt from Ptolemy’s Amalgest, 2nd century AD;
Well do I know that I am mortal, a creature of one
day.
But if my mind follows the winding paths of the stars
Then my feet no longer rest on earth, but standing by
Zeus himself I take my fill of the ambrosia, the divine
dish. - Byron’s “The Destruction of Sennacherib”
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass'd,
And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there roll'd not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.
And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpets unblown.
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!
Someday a man, hearing you weep, will say of you:
“Here is the wife of Hector, breaker of horses,
who was ever the bravest fighter,
in the days when they fought about Ilion.”
But may I be dead and the piled earth hide me under before I hear you weeping and know by this that they take you captive.”
And meanwhile there was heard
A mighty shout: "Come, O ye sons of Greeks,
Make free your country, make your children free,
Your wives, and fanes of your ancestral gods, And your sires' tombs! For all we now contend!"