Looking Back - Ancient India - Indus Civilisation

I’m doing a series called looking back, documenting learning the children and I did together prior to me blogging.  To be honest it’s more for my sake than anyone else’s.  Blogging is like having a scrap-book, but takes about a quarter of the time to stay up to date

Our study of Ancient India began with this book:

To which we added these:

   

Every civilisation starts with these three books, if they have one on the civilisation in question.

I then add any fiction I can get my hands on.  Fiction set in Ancient india is nearby impossible:

The boy with pale eyes: A story of Indus Valley by Helen Cannam

Next we made a map.  Sometimes we do folder maps, other times papier mache maps but this time we went for a cookie map.  We looked at paper maps of India and tried to replicate it:

Just baked India shaped cookie

We added lots of decoration and icing:

The final product

And a close up with Toblerone Himalayas, lace rivers, blue smartie sea, and I’m not sure about the rest!

I think next time I would get them to add a key to show which sweet represented which land mark as it’s not terribly clear (!).

I also had them fill in a paper map for good measure:

They wrote a quick paragraph about the Indus Valley:

I had them choose two of the myths from the book pictured above.  They wrote a key word outline or spider diagram (T prefers these) and rewrote them in their own words.  These are T, who was maybe 9 at the time, and chose to write about the Brand New Cosmos and Ganesh:

Ganesh

The Brand New Cosmos

The Brand New Cosmos cont.

In my search through the web, I happened upon this fun activity, which they all did with aplomb!  The children had to read all the evidence and make up their own conclusion about what happened to the Indus Civilisation.

This was a great introduction to simple critical thinking.

We read Savitri and used these extra sheets for information.  The children put on a play, acting out Savitri.

After reading all our books we filled out a lapbook from Hands of a Child whilst doing lots of hands on activity:

I always do lapbook pieces and stick them on card to allow for easier storage inside our files

We often add bits to the lap book. Here we learnt an inscription found from the Ajanta Caves. We also did our own cave painting using chalk pastels and a brown paper bag

We looked at the ancient pictogram writing they used

We learnt how to put on a sari and tie died a small piece of material in preparation for making our own tie died saris

We always try to either make or buy in dressing up.  Our children seriously LOVE dressing up and play acting.  Even as I write this they are in the living room acting out kings, princes and servants, have made a huge beduin tent over our beams and are generally having a ball (this is all 5 including the baby – too cute!).  This time we thought saris would be fairly easy to make and I decided I could teach them a new skill by tie dying the material.  I bought the cheapest white material I could buy.  I was informed that I needed 6 meters for each child.  We bought some pink and blue cold water dye and followed the instructions to a tee.  First though we made sure we had tied mounds of fabric to create a circle pattern and simply tied rope around the material to create straight lines.  We did all this in the bath (so much material) and dried it on the line.

The lady who runs our newsagent very kindly offered to come around on her only afternoon off and teach the children to put on a sari properly and T to put on a turban.  She also, bless her, brought some Indian jewelary and sticker-bindhi, which she genorously allowed our children to keep:

Wearing our homemade tie dyed saris.  Don’t they look stunning?

And with the lovely lady that helped

Another activity included applying henna to our hands.  I also cut out hand shapes for all the children and gave them sheets with henna patterns on to copy, so they could have a go themselves:

They used some of the forehead stickers to decorate their card hands!

And as a final activity we made chapati:

First the dough was made following the recipe given in our lap book

It was rolled, pulled, played with and thrown in the air for good measure…

The chapati was placed in a hot pan for a few seconds…

Held over a naked flame…

And finally devoured. It was YUMMY!!

   

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