World History

World History

Ancient Egypt

500 – 1250 1840 – 1880
Ancient Greece

1250 – 1550

1880 – 1930
Ancient Rome

1550 – 1750

1930 – 1960
0 – 500

1750 – 1840 1960 – present
Here at the Sculley Academy, we study World History from Ancient times to the present, in a systematic way, covering the above time periods every four years.

We study a time period by any of the following methods:

read “living books” from that period

use computer / internet to explore the period

study biographies of leaders, scientists, inventors, musicians, artists, writers, explorers, missionaries

make models of buildings, costumes, etc.

explore interesting web sites on world history, like:

play games from the period

Creative Impulse

examine art and music from that period

This Day in History

visit museums, both real and virtual

Best of History Web Sites

get cool, cheap (!) projects / books from Dover Publications, Bellerophon Books

make period arts and crafts

Mr. Donn’s Ancient History Page

play music or sing songs from the period

Calliope World History magazines

memorize a poem from that period

Jackdaw

cook something from that period

Biography.com

make an item of period clothing

Food Timeline (what people ate when!)

watch videos about that time period

Chronological listing of G. A. Henty books (these are great!)

Ancient Egypt & other ancients!

Cheops, pharaoh (2700-2675 B.C.), Abraham (2100 B.C.), Hammurabi (1750 B.C.), Queen Hatsehpsut (1480 B. C.), Moses (1450 B.C.), Tutankhamen (1355 B.C.), Nebuchadnezzar (1146 – 1123 B.C.), King David (1000 B.C.), Sennacherib (705 – 681 B.C.), Lao Tse (b. 640 B.C.), Confucius (551 – 479 B.C.), Buddha (550 – 480 B.C.), Darius I of Persia (522 – 485 B.C.), Shi Huangdi (221 – 207 B.C.)

We made a model of the Nile River delta, using rocks, soil, sand, and real grass seeds which grew up to look like the reeds along the Nile.

We wrote our names in hieroglyphics, using our Fun With Hieroglyphics kit.

We studied simple machines, which were known to be in use in this time period (lever, wheel, inclined plane, screw).

We read these books:

Bill and Pete Go Down the Nile

Gift of the Nile: An Ancient Egyptian Legend

Cat of Bubastes — this was excellent

Science in Ancient Egypt

Modern Rhymes About Ancient Times: Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt

What Do We Know About the Egyptians?

The Egyptian Cinderella

Senefer: A Young Genius in Old Egypt

Cleopatra

His Majesty, Queen Hatshepsut

Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt

Time Traveler Book of Pharaohs and Pyramids

Pyramid (David Macaulay)

Pyramid (Eyewitness)

Mystery of the Hieroglyphs

In Search of Tutankhamen

Shipwrecked Sailor: an Egyptian Tale with Hieroglyphs

Tut’s Mummy . . . Lost and Found

I am the Mummy Heb-Nefert

How to Make a Mummy Talk

Mummies Made in Egypt

Tutankhamen’s Gift

Pharaoh’s and Pyramids

See-Through Mummies

Tut’s Mummy . . . Lost and Found

Tirzah

Museum Guides for Kids: Egyptian Art

Ancient Science

The Ancient Egyptians

God King: A Story in the Days of King Hezekiah

Riddle of the Rosetta Stone

Greenleaf Guide to Ancient Egypt

The Ancient Egyptians: Life in the Nile Valley

The Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt

We explored these websites:

Ancient Egypt

Little Horus Web Site

I gave the children various little activity books from Dover–mazes, bookmarks, magic picture books, postcards, and art stickers. They just love these!

We did activities from these books:

The Egyptians (Footsteps in Time)

Pyramids: 50 Hands-on Activities

We watched these movies:

This Old Pyramid — fantastic!

Pyramid (NOVA)

We saw the 3rd largest pyramid in the world–not in Egypt, but in Las Vegas 🙂

We did the activities in the Lift the Lid on Mummies kit. The children really enjoyed this, though it was pretty pricey for what it was.

We visited the Michael C. Carlos museum, and saw, among other things, the body of the Pharaoh Rameses that Moses had spoken with, right before it was sent back to Egypt permanently.

Ancient Greece

Homer (800 B.C.), Pythagoras (581-497 B.C.), Socrates (470-399 B.C.), Hippocrates (b. 460 B.C.), Plato (427 – 347 B.C.), Aristotle (384 – 322 B.C.), Alexander the Great (356 – 323 B.C.)

Be an archaeologist–reassemble a clay pot

We read these books:

Black Ships Before Troy

Theras and His Town (Caroline Dale Snedeker)

Adventures in Ancient Greece (Linda Bailey)

Alexander the Great (Robert Green)

Boys’ and Girls’ Herodotus (John S. White)

The Children’s Homer (Patraic Colum)

In Search of a Homeland: The Story of the Aeneid (Penelope Lively)

Lysis Goes to the Play (Caroline Dale Snedeker)

Science in Ancient Greece (Kathlyn Gay)

The Wanderings of Odysseus (Rosemary Sutcliff)

The Greeks

The Ancient Greeks: In the Land of the Gods

Classical Kids: An Activity Guide to Life in Ancient Greece and Rome

the Usborne book The Greeks

D’aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths.

Ancient Greece (History Detectives)

Ancient Greece (Modern Rhymes for Ancient Times).

Theseus and the Minotaur

The Librarian Who Measured the Earth (Kathryn Lasky)

Alexander the Great

Archimedes and the Door of Science

The Trojan Horse [P & J followed this up by reading most of Homer’s Iliad]

The Tanglewood Tales (these are Ancient Greek myths)

The children each colored pages from Dover’s Life in Ancient Greece Coloring Book

The children used Dover’s Ancient Greek Costumes Paper Dolls

The children each made gorgeous mosaic pictures, in Ancient Greek style (except they used colored paper on black backgrounds instead of real tiles :)). P made a replica of an Ancient Greek temple; J made the Trojan horse; M made Jesus’ cross and a nail; C made a flower. I laminated each one, so they can use them as place mats. They are very beautiful.

P wrote a paper entitled “How Greeks Thought the Earth Began”; J wrote out a poem from Modern Rhymes for Ancient Times about the Parthenon, and illustrated it; M drew and colored a picture of Athenian pottery; C wrote out a poem about the Trojan Horse.

We read about the Ancient Greek Olympics.

Ancient Rome

Romulus (753 – 716 B.C.), Hannibal (fought with Rome 218 – 207 B.C.), Judas Maccabaeus (168 B.C.), Cicero (106 – 43 B.C.), Julius Caesar (100 – 44 B.C.), Virgil (70 – 19 B.C.), Caesar Augustus (45 B.C. – A.D. 14), Jesus Christ (4 B.C. – A.D. 33), Caligula (d. A.D. 42), Saint Paul (d. A.D. 45), Nero (d. A.D. 68), Marcus Auerelius (ruled 161 – 180), Constantine the Great (306 – 337)

Cool Ancient Rome links:

The Roman Empire in the First Century

Construct an Aqueduct

The Romans (well, some of them!)

Who were the Romans

The Romans

Rome

Rome

We read about carrier pigeons, which were first used during this time period.

We studied wrestling, which was popular at this time.

We read these books:

Modern Rhymes for Ancient Times — a favorite series!

Roman Life

First Facts About the Ancient Romans

History Detectives: The Romans

The Roman News

P read Quo Vadis

J read The Silver Branch

We designed name posters, using the names we would have had if we had lived in Ancient Rome. My name would have been Gena Prima Creatrix (i.e. daughter of Gene, firstborn daughter, creative :)) Our girls didn’t like the fact that each of them would have had the same first names (Paula Prima, Paula Secundus, Paula Tertius)!

We used the Lift the Lid on Ancient Rome kit–a lot of fun, especially the model gladiator.

On a long vacation trip, we listened to the book The Robe on tape (23-1/2 hours!) We absolutely loved this story–very moving.

We watched the movies:

Roman City

Julius Caesar

Early Christianity (0 – 500)

Saint Augustine (writing 411), Attila the Hun (433 – 453)

General

“Fountain of Life”

“Twice Freed”

“Holy Land”

Attila the Hun

“Attila the Hun” (W. Scott Ingram)

Constantine

“70 Great Christians”

“The 100 Most Important Events in Christian History”

“Constantine: Ruler of Christian Rome” (Julian Morgan)

Early Christians

The Bronze Bow (Elizabeth George Speare)

Pompeii

“The Buried City of Pompeii”

“Pompeii . . . Buried Alive!”

We made a model of Mt. Vesuvius, using dirt, a cut-off water bottle, clay, baking soda and vinegar! It was quite stunning, and the soil wound up looking like volcanic rock (porous), except for the live worms that poked their heads out.

We made paper mosaic pictures, since we read that some of the people who lived in Pompeii had mosaic floors.

We made magnetic mosaics with a set we bought at the National Gallery which has 2000+ tiny magnetic mosaic pieces in 12 different colors — very fun!

St. Patrick

Patrick, Patron Saint of Ireland (Tomie de Paola)

“70 Great Christians”

“The 100 Most Important Events in Christian History”

“Saint Patrick” (Ann Tompert)

“St. Patrick and Irish Christianity” (Tom Corfe)

We decorated three-leaf clover pictures, writing the meaning that St. Patrick used — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit [grace if four-leaf] (not faith, hope, love, luck, as some say)

500 – 1250

King Arthur (d. 537), Gregory of Tours (540 – 594), Mohammed (570 – 632), the Venerable Bede (672- 735), Charles Martel (688 – 741), Charlemagne (ruled 768 – 814), Alfred the Great (849 – 899), Leif Ericsson (c. 1000), Sridhara (c. 1000), Omar Khayyam (1027 – 1123), Edward the Confessor (1042 – 1066), Chretien de Troyes (1144 – 1190), Genghis Khan (1162 – 1227), William the Conqueror (1027 – 1087), Pope Urban II (1042 – 1099), Bhaskara (1114 – 1185), Saladin (1138 – 1193), Zhu Xi (1130 – 1200), Fan Kuan (990 – 1030), Guido of Arezzo (991 – 1033), Pope Innocent III (1160 – 1216), Ibn Sina (980 – 1037)

Magna Charta

We read The Magna Charta.

Monks

We read The Everyday Life of a Medieval Monk, by Giovanni Caselli.

Thomas Becket

We read If All the Swords in England, a story about Thomas Becket.

Vikings

We read these books:

The Vikings (Footsteps in Time)

The Usborne Illustrated World History: The Viking World

The Story of Rolf and the Viking Bow

We read about the Vikings in Calliope (a magazine)

Paul and Karen watched the movie, The Vikings, starring Kirk Douglas, but felt the children were too young to watch it yet (at the time, our oldest had just turned 11).

The children used the Dover book of Viking stencils to make project pages.

We explored these websites:

Viking Voyage 1000

The World of Vikings

NOVA Vikings

Genghis Khan

We read “The Life and Times of Genghis Khan”

Charlemagne

We read “The Life and Times of Charlemagne”

Edward the Confessor

We read “The Silver King

Alfred the Great

We read “The Life and Times of Alfred the Great”

1250 – 1550

Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274), Dante Alighieri (1265 – 1321), Geoffrey Chaucer (1343 – 1400), Thomas a Kempis (1380 – 1471), Jan Van Eyck (1390 – 1441), Johannes Gutenberg (1396 – 1468), Edward I (1239 – 1307), Marco Polo (1265 – 1321), Osman (1258 – 1324), Tamerlane (1336 – 1405), Petrarch (1304 – 1374), Cheng Ho (1371 – 1444), Yung Lo (1403 – 1424), Joan of Arc (1412 – 1431), Zheng He (1731 – 1435), Kublai Khan (1215 – 1294), Ibn Battuta (1304 – 1377), Sandro Botticelli (1444 – 1510), Christopher Columbus (1451 – 1506), Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519), Amerigo Vespucci (1454 – 1512), Erasmus (1465 – 1536), Nicholaus Copernicus (1473 – 1543), Michelangelo (1475 – 1564), Titian (1477- 1576), Thomas More (1478 – 1535), Ferdinand Magellan (1480 – 1521), Martin Luther (1483 – 1546), Raphael (1483 – 1520), St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491 – 1556), Correggio (1494 – 1534), Giovanni Angelo de’ Medici (1499 – 1565), Thomas Wyatt (1503 – 1542), Nostradamus (1503 – 1566), John Knox (1505 – 1572), John Calvin (1509 – 1564), Hernando Cortes (1485 – 1547), Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449 – 1492), Queen Isabella I (1451 – 1504), Vasco de Gama (1460 -1524), Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527), Francis Pizarro (1475 – 1541), Henry VIII (1491 – 1547), Suleyman the Magnificent (1494 – 1566)

general fiction

Adam of the Road (Elizabeth Janet Gray)

St. George for England (G. A. Henty)

At Agincourt (G. A. Henty)

Martin Luther

Luther the Leader (Virgil Robinson)

Martin Luther: A Man Who Changed the World (Paul L. Maier)

John Wycliffe

The Beggar’s Bible (Louise A. Vernon)

William Tyndale

The Bible Smuggler (Louise A. Vernon)

illumination

Marguerite Makes a Book (Bruce Robertson)

Johannes Gutenberg

Ink on His Fingers (Louise A. Vernon)

John Calvin

The River of Grace: The Story of John Calvin (Joyce McPherson)

Erasmus

The Man Who Laid the Egg (Louise A. Vernon)

Scottish War of Independence

In Freedom’s Cause: A Story of Wallace and Bruce (G. A. Henty)

Great Plague (Black Death)

The Door in the Wall (Marguerite D’Angeli)

Christopher Columbus

We read Christopher Columbus by Peter and Connie Roop.

Joan of Arc

We read Joan of Arc, by Nancy Wilson Ross

Knights

We read The Making of a Knight, by Patrick O’Brien

Minstrels

We read The Minstrel in the Tower, by Gloria Skurzynski

1550 – 1750

Pieter Brueghel (1520 – 1569), Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525 – 1594), Tycho Brahe (1546 – 1601), Philip Sidney (1551 – 1586), Walter Raleigh (1554 – 1618), William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642), Jan Brueghel (1568 – 1625), John Donne (1572 – 1631), Inigo Jones (1573 – 1652), Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650), Queen Elizabeth I (1533 – 1603), Ieyasu Tokogawa (1542 – 1616), Miguel de Cervantes (1547 – 1616), Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626), William Harvey (1578 – 1657), Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679), Shah Jahan (1592 – 1666), Oliver Cromwell (1599 – 1658), John Milton (1606 – 1674), Rembrandt (1606 – 1669), Akbar (1542 – 1605), Matteo Ricci (1552 – 1610), Andrea Palladio (1508 – 1580), Claudio Monteverdi (1567 – 1643), Catherine de Medicis (1519 – 1589), John Locke (1632 – 1704), Louis XIV (1638 – 1715), Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727), Peter the Great (1672 – 1725), Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750), Montesquieu (1689 – 1775), Voltaire (1694 – 1778), Ben Franklin (1706 – 1790), John Harrison (1693 – 1776), Carolus Linnaeus (1707 – 1778)

General

P & J listened to the book The Man in the Iron Mask on tape

Elizabeth I of England

We read Good Queen Bess: The Story of Elizabeth I of England

Galileo Galilei

We read Starry Messenger.

We made a replica of Galileo’s telescope.

Louis XIV of France

We read The King’s Day: Louis XIV of France

Peter the Great of Russia

We read Peter the Great

William Shakespeare

We read these books:

Bard of Avon

William Shakespeare and the Globe

The Best of Shakespeare: Retellings of 10 Classic Plays

Brush Up Your Shakespeare

All the children and Karen attended a performance of “Romeo and Juliet”

Karen, P, and J attended a performance of “A Midsummer’s Night Dream.”

P, J, M, and C attended a Shakespeare workshop.

1750 – 1840

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778), Adam Smith (1723 – 1790), Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804), George Washington (1732 – 1799), James Watts (1736 – 1819), Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826), Edward Jenner (1749 – 1823), James Madison (1751 – 1836), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791), Mary Wollstonecraft (1756 – 1797), John Dalton (1766 – 1844), Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 – 1821), Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 – 1831), Jane Austen (1775 – 1817), Richard Arkwright (1732 – 1792), Cao Xueqin (1715 – 1763), Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743 – 1794), Hokusai (1760 – 1849), Karl von Clausewitz (1780 – 1831), Simon Bolivar (1783 – 1830), Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre (1789 – 1851), Michael Faraday (1791 – 1867), Samuel Morse (1791 – 1872), Charles Babbage (1792 – 1871)

Captain James Cook

We studied the voyages of Captain James Cook (first voyage: 1768 – 1771)

“Remarkable Voyages of Captain Cook” (Rhoda Blumberg)

“Captain Cook” (Richard Bowen)

“Exploramaze”

Composers

Ludwig van Beethoven

Hector Berlioz

Frederic Chopin

Franz Schubert

Exploration

“Exploring the Pacific Northwest” (Rose Blue & Corinne Naden)

“A Dog Came Too” (Ainslie Manson)

“Buried in Ice” (Owen Beattie & John Geiger)

French Revolution

“Paris 1789” (Rachel Wright)

“The King’s Day: Louix XIV of France” (Aliki)

“A Child’s Eye View of History”

Industrial Revolution

We read about how the steam engine revolutionized spinning.

“Kids During the Industrial Revolution” (Lisa Wroble)

“Accidents May Happen” (Charlotte Foltz Jones)

“Great Inventors and Inventions Coloring Book” (Dover)

Morse

Quick, Annie, Give Me a Catchy Line: A Story of Samuel F. B. Morse (Robert Quackenbush)

Samuel F. B. Morse: Inventor and Code Creator (Judy Alter)

Voting

“You Want Women to Vote, Lizzie Stanton?” (Jean Fritz)

Wesley

“A Heart Strangely Warmed” (Louise A. Vernon)

1840 – 1880

Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882), Cyrus McCormick (1809 – 1884), Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865), Edgar Allen Poe (1809 – 1849), P. T. Barnum (1810 – 1891), Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870), Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815 – 1902), Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862), Frederick Douglass (1818 – 1895), Karl Marx (1818 – 1883), William T. G. Morton (1819 – 1868), Florence Nightingale (1820 – 1910), Elizabeth Blackwell (1821 – 1910), Clara Barton (1821 – 1912), Harriet Tubman (1821 – 1913), Gregor Mendel (1822 – 1884), Louis Pasteur (1822 – 1895), Otto von Bismarck (1815 – 1898), Joseph Lister (1827 – 1912), Tz’U-Hsu (1835 – 1908), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900), Thomas Edison (1847 – 1931), Alexander Graham Bell (1847 – 1922), Susan B. Anthony (1820 – 1906), Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910)

Hudson Taylor

We read a biography of Hudson Taylor (YWAM).

Charles Dickens

We listened to Focus on the Family’s radio theater performance of A Christmas Carol — excellent!

We read Charles Dickens: The Man Who Had Great Expectations.

The children colored pages from Dover’s A Christmas Carol coloring book.

Gregor Mendel

We read “Gregor Mendel: Father of Genetics”

Louis Pasteur

We read “Louis Pasteur: Founder of Modern Medicine”

Elizabeth Blackwell

We read “Elizabeth Blackwell: Girl Doctor”

Clara Barton

We read “Clara Barton: Founder of the American Red Cross”

We watched the movie “Les Miserables”

1880 – 1930

Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939), Chaka (d. 1898), Carry Nation (1846 – 1911), Crazy Horse (1849 – 1877), Cecil Rhodes (1853 – 1902), Henry Ford (1863 – 1947), George Washington Carver (1864 – 1943), Sun Yat-Sen (1866 – 1925), Marie Curie (1867 – 1934), Meiji, Emperor Mutsohito (1867 – 1912), Frank Lloyd Wright (1867 – 1959), Wright Brothers (1867 – 1912, 1871 – 1948), Guglielmo Marconi (1874 – 1937), John D. Rockefeller (1839 – 1937), Nicola Tesla (1856 – 1943), Hiram Maxim (1840 – 1916), Jane Addams (1860 – 1935), Theodor Herzl (1860 – 1904), Santiago Ramon y Cajal (1852 – 1934), Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870 – 1924), Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973), Igor Stravinsky (1882 – 1971), Coco Chanel (1883 – 1971), James Joyce (1882 – 1941), T. S. Eliot (1888 – 1965), Charlie Chaplin (1889 – 1977), David Sarnoff (1891 – 1971), Louis B. Mayer (1885 – 1957), Leo Baekeland (1863 – 1944), Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955), Alexander Fleming (1881 – 1955), Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951), Jean Piaget (1896 – 1980), John Maynard Keynes (1883 – 1946), Emmaline Pankhurst (1858 – 1928), Ernest Rutherford (1871 – 1937), Enrico Caruso (1871 – 1937), Robert Frost (1874 – 1963), D. W. Griffith (1875 – 1948), Reza Shah Pahlavi (1878 – 1944), Abdul-Aziz (d. 1953), Joseph Stalin (1879 – 1953), Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955), Margaret Sanger (1879 – 1966), Helen Keller (1880 – 1968), Alexander Fleming (1881 – 1955), Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 – 1945), Virginia Woolf (1882 – 1941), Khalil Gibran (1883 – 1931), Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 – 1962), Georgia O’Keefe (1887 – 1986), Vladimir Zworykin (1889 – 1982), Niels Bohr (1885 – 1962), Edwin Hubble (1889 – 1953)

general fiction

Pecos Bill: The Greatest Cowboy of All Time (James Cloyd Bowman)

Theodore Roosevelt

Carry a Big Stick: The Uncommon Heroism of Theodore Roosevelt (George Grant)

George Washington Carver

George Washington Carver: An Innovative Life (Elizabeth MacLeod)

Great Depression

Hitch (Jeanette Ingold)

World War I

Sergeant York and the Great War (Alvin York & Tom Skeyhill)

The Yanks are Coming (Albert Marrin)

Karl Benz

We read about Karl Benz

Gugielmo Marconi

We read about Gugielmo Marconi

Nikola Tesla

We then read about Nikola Tesla–even though he actually invented radio, Marconi ended up getting the credit for it!

Wilbur & Orville Wright

The Wright Brothers (Quentin Reynolds)

1930 – 1960

Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965), Adolf Hitler (1889 – 1945), Lucky Luciano (1897 – 1962), Enrico Fermi (1901 – 1954), Kurt Godel (1906 – 1978), Alan Turing (1912 – 1954), Anne Frank (1929 – 1945), Haile Selassie I (1892 – 1975), Martha Graham (1893 – 1997), F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940), Amelia Earhart (1896 – 1937), Marian Anderson (1898 – 1937), Golda Meir (1898 – 1978), Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961), Alfred Hitchcock (1899 – 1980), Duke Ellington (1899 – 1974), Fred Astaire (1899 – 1987), Ginger Rogers (1911 – 1995), Emperor Hirohito (1901 – 1989), Zora Neale Hurston (1901 – 1960), Louis Armstrong (1901 – 1971), Walt Disney (1901 – 1966), Werner Heisenberg (1901 – 1976), Langston Hughes (1902 – 1967), Bob Hope (1903 – ?), Gregory Pincus (1903 – 1967), Robert J. Oppenheimer (1904 – 1967), Deng Xiaoping (1904 – 1997), Jesse Owens (1913 – 1980), John von Neumann (1903 – 1957), Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976), David Ben Gurion (1886 – 1973), Le Corbusier (1887 – 1965), Akio Morita (1921 – 1999), William Shockley (1910 – ?), James Watson & Francis Crick (1928 – ?, 1916 – ?), Edmund Hillary & Tenzing Norgay (1919 – ?, 1914 – 1986), Che Guevara (1928 – 1967), Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910 – 1997), Andrei Sakharov (1921 – 1989), Rachel Carson (1907 – 1964), Margaret Mead (1907 – 1978), Thurgood Marshall (1908 – 1993), Bette Davis (1908 – 1989), Simone de Beauvoir (1908 – 1986), Edward R. Murrow (1908 – 1965), Akira Kurosawa (1910 – 1998), Jacques Cousteau (1910 – 1997), Lucille Ball (1911 – 1989), Rosa Parks (1913 – ?), Jonas Salk (1914 – 1995), Orson Welles (1915 – 1985), Frank Sinatra (1915 – 1998), I. M. Pei (1917 – ?), Indira Gandhi (1917 – 1948), Anwar L. Sadat (1918 – 1981), Ella Fitzgerald (1918 – 1996), Jackie Robinson (1919 – 1972), Betty Friedan (1921 – ?), Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869 – 1948), Roger Bannister (1929 – ?), Kwame Nkrumah (1909 – 1972)

World War II

We read these books:

The Good Fight: How WWII Was Won — this is the best book I’ve ever seen on the second world war

Hiroshima

The Shadow Series [The Lonely Sentinel, Hideout in the Swamp, The Grim Reaper, The Partisans, Sabotage] — P absolutely loved these, and couldn’t put them down

A Picture Book of Anne Frank

Anne Frank: Life in Hiding

My Secret Camera

Tell Them We Remember

The children used some World War II postcards to make project pages.

We explored these websites:

A Guide to the Good War: Resources on World War II

Hiroshima Archive

Anne Frank Online

U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

We watched these movies:

The Diary of Anne Frank (the old one, starring Millie Perkins & Shelley Winters) — this was an excellent movie without too much graphical detail that would be unsuitable for young children

Wonderworks: Miracle at Moreaux — another great movie suitable for families

1960 – present

Ho Chi Minh (1890 – 1969), Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902 – 1989), The Beatles (1962 – 1970), Leakey family (1936 – 1985), Pele (1940 – ?), Ronald Reagan (1911 – ?), John F. Kennedy (1917 – 1963), Yitzhak Rabin (1922 – 1995), Malcolm X (1925 – 1965), Marilyn Monroe (1926 – 1962), Gabriel Garcia-Marquez (1928 – ?), Muhammed Ali (1928 – ?), Andy Warhol (1928 – 1987), Maya Angelou (1928 – ?), Pol Pot (1928 – 1998), Martin Luther King Jr. (1928 – 1968), Neil Armstrong (1930 – ?), Snadra Day O’Connor (1930 – ?), Chinua Achebe (1930 – ?), Alvin Ailey (1931 – 1989), Toni Morrison (1931 – ?), Desmund Tutu (1931 – ?), Corazon Aquino (1933 – ?), Gloria Steinem (1934 – ?), Luciano Pavarotti (1935 – ?), Elvis Presley (1935 – 1977), Zubin Mehta (1936 – ?), Bill Cosby (1937 – ?), Saddam Hussein (1937 – ?), Bob Dylan (1941 – ?), Margaret Thatcher (1925 – ?), Lech Walesa (1943 – ?), Ronald Reagan (1911 – ?), Mikhail Gorbachev (1931 – ?), Pope John Paul II (1920 – ?), The Unknown Rebel (Tiananmen Square, 1989), Nelson Mandela (1918 – ?), Tim Berners-Lee (1955 – ?), Diana, Princess of Wales (1961 – 1997), Steven Hawking (1942 – ?), Alice Walker (1944 – ?), Steven Spielburg (1947 – ?), Sally Ride (1951 – ?), Tenzin Gyatso (1953 – ?), Benazir Bhutto (1953 – ?), Oprah Winfrey (1954 – ?), Bill Gates (1954 – ?), Robert E. Kahn & Vinton G. Cerf (1955 – ?), Ian Wilmut (1944 – ?), Michael Jackson (1958 – ?), Madonna (1959 – ?), The Grateful Dead (1965 – ?), Ryan White (1971 – 1990), Louise Brown (1978 – ?)

Cool links

Endangered Planet

Fallout

Living Longer

Biographies

“Bruchko” (Bruce Olsen)

“Children of the Storm”

Computers

“Computers” (Steve Parker)

Jumbo Jet

We learned about the invention of the Jumbo Jet.

Lasers

“Lasers” (Nina Morgan)

Mother Teresa

“Come and See: A Photojournalist’s Journey into the World of Mother Teresa”

“Mother Teresa” (Demi)

“Mother Teresa” (Anne Marie Sullivan & Robert Ingpen)

Space Exploration

“Space Exploration” (Carole Stott)

“Moonwalk”

“Reaching for the Moon” (Buzz Aldrin)

“One Giant Leap: the Story of Neil Armstrong” (Don Brown)

“Flight of the Falcon” (Paul Thomsen)

“Exploramaze”

“Yuri Gagarin: the First Man in Space” (Heather Feldman)

“Valentina Tereshkova: The First Woman in Space” (Heather Feldman)

We watched the video, “One Giant Leap”