Story of the World Narrations

One of my favorite activities and recommendations as a way to study history using the Story of the World is doing narrations with the girls. They dictate a narration to me for each topic we read. The narration includes what they thought were the most important or interesting facts from the lesson and suggested reading(s). As they get older they will write the narrations themselves (so this is a great activity to ease us into writing assignments). After we've written the summary the girls illustrate what we've discussed. The narration process allows me to assess what the girls have learned or what we might need to review. It's also a perfect way to channel and capture their artwork in a fun way. Finally, it provides a fun way to review what we've learned in prior weeks because the girls enjoy looking at their previous work. 

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In the narration below Reagan drew an Egyptian (in red) with a tool in her hand for writing hieroglyphics. She also wrote her name in English and then used a chart provided in our activity book to write her name using hieroglyphics as well as cuneiform. These are two of the earliest known forms of writing. The girls weren't super excited about this chapter so we moved along relatively quickly instead of spending the week on it as I had originally planned. For some reason the idea of drawing hieroglyphics really frustrated Reagan. I'm not sure why because I presented it as a fun drawing/coloring activity that I would be happy to provide assistance with. Kennedy on the other hand thought it was a great idea. Once Reagan calmed down and saw what Kennedy and I were doing she declared it to be lots of fun! You can see some of her final efforts of both forms of writing on this page. 

 This is a narration Kennedy did this week on the First Summerian Dictator. We discussed how King Sargon united all the city-states within Mesopotamia into one country, Akkadia. I thought her idea of drawing one big circle to depict the united country with many little circles to represent all the cities was pretty clever. I also thought she did a good job of drawing the Euphrates (on the left) and Tigris (on the right) rivers. The person in green (Kennedy's favorite color) is King Sargon and all the little red people are his army.