Learning About Greece: Activities and Resources

We spent the last several weeks learning all about Greece. We located Greece on our big world map, colored Greece in our world geography coloring books, took a virtual tour of the Parthenon, made a Greek meal, did a Greek pottery craft, and learned about the Greek constellations. Keep reading for activity ideas and lots of links to resources for studying Greece in your homeschool.

Basic Information:

Greece is a country in south eastern Europe. It shares land borders with Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Turkey. It's southern region is boarderd by the Aegean, Ionian, Cretan, and Mediterranean Seas. The mainland is mostly mountainous. It is also comprised of several island chains. Greece has hot dry summers and wet winters.

Capital- Athens

Population- 10,500,000

Size- 50,942 sq miles

Currency- Euro

Type of Government- Parliamentary republic

National Anthem- Hymn to Liberty

National Animal- Dolphin

National Bird- Phoenix

Famous Places and Monuments:

The Parthenon- The Parthenon is an ancient Greek temple to the goddess Athena. It was completed in 438 B.C. Today it is a popular tourist destination.

You can take a 360 degree virtual tour here: 360 Tour- Athens: Parthenon.

You can learn more about the Parthenon with this video from Smarthistory: Parthenon.

The Meteora- The meteora is a rock formation in central Greece upon which a series of monasteries are built. The meteora are huge natural pillars that stand 1,000-1,800 feet high. The monasteries were built in the 11th century. You can visit some of them still today by climbing massive staircases carved into the rock.

You can take a look at these beautiful monasteries with this short video: Meteora- The Cliff Top Monasteries of Greece.

Ionian Islands- The Ionian Islands are a group of islands off the west coast of Greece. They are famous for their gorgeous beaches and lush green landscapes. The Ionian Islands include the island of Ithaca, the home of Odysseus from Homer's The Odyssey.

Recipes:

We put together a simple Greek meal for dinner one night. We made Greek lemon chicken soup. We used this recipe from Allrecipes:

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/12963/greek-lemon-chicken-soup/.

It was delicious! We also had pita bread and black and green olives.

Some other recipes you could try are:

-Baked Chicken Moussaka

-Greek Baklava

-Greek Style Stuffed Peppers

-Greek Lentil Soup

-Greek Style Pork Kabobs

Crafts and Activities:

Greek Pottery Scratch Art Craft

For this activity you will need:

-White paper

-Crayons or pastels

-Black tempra paint

-Dish soap

-A penny

Start by coloring a white piece of paper completely with crayons or pastels. Use a variety of colors in patches or stripes. Press hard so you have a deep color and be sure to completely cover the page. Bright colors like orange, yellow, and bright green give the best results. Darker colors like dark blue, dark green, and maroon wont show up as well on your finished project.

Next mix about half a cup of black tempra paint with a few drops of dish soap. The dish soap helps the paint stick to the waxy crayon. Then paint over the entire page. Make a fairly thick layer of paint so you cannot see the crayon underneath.

Set your painted paper aside to dry. While it's drying look at some pictures of traditional Greek pottery. A quick Google image search will give you lots to look at. Notice the types of shapes and designs that are common. We noticed that a lot of Greek poetry has geometric designs or patterns beneath the rim and near the bottom and a larger picture in the center.

When your painting is completely dry, make a plan for what you want your pot to look like. Using the penny gently scrape a pot or vase shape onto your page. You want to scrape hard enough to remove the black paint, but gentle enough to leave the crayon below. Then add patterns and pictures to your vase.

If you accidentally end up scraping too hard in places and remove the crayon, you can add some color back in by coloring those places with a crayon or pastel.

Greek Constellation STEM Activity

Many of the constellations we recognize today originate from ancient Greece. The ancient Greeks used the movement of the stars to track the seasons. They likely started telling stories about particular groupings of stars to make them easier to recognize and track. Many of these stories or myths were about the Greek gods or other figures popular in Greek mythology.

Read a few of the constellation myths, this site has lots: Theoi Project- Star Myths. After you've read a few, make the constellations you read about. To do this we first looked the constellations up on Google images so we could see their shapes and the stars they are comprised of, then we constructed them out of gumdrops and toothpicks.

You can extend the learning if you want to, by challenging your students to design and construct their own constellations, and then have them write a Greek style myth about them. My daughter wrote a story about a magical chicken.