A Summer Introduction to the Great Lessons for a Rising Sixth Grader

As Doodle and I have never done more than dabble with Montessori mixing little pieces into our curriculum, he has never experienced the Great Lessons. This June and July, we will be doing a quick introduction. I am very excited and hope Doodle will be as well.

Alongside the Great Lessons, we will be reading A Really Short History of Everything by Bill Bryson, and, when we reach Lesson 3, we will read From Then to Now by Christopher Moore.

For our overview, I tried to find just one book for each lesson that was short but at an appropriate interest level for a rising sixth grader. I also tried to find something visual. I don’t plan to do much in the way of output.

Lesson 1, The Coming of the Universe and Earth
Book
How the World Began: Creation in Myths and Legends

Poster
The Cosmos: You Are There

Visual
We will print the Cosmic Timeline shown at the scale of one calendar year from the University of Victoria site of Prof. Arif Babul and attach it to the poster.

Activity
We will go to the park and do The Earth as a Peppercorn solar system model. There are a lot of descriptions online explaining how to do this activity.

Lesson 2, The Coming of Life
Book
The Big Picture Book

Poster
The Eras of Life

Visual
We will print this Clock of Eras and attach it to the poster. I may also print a timeline of life that includes major extinction events, and attach it to the poster. There are several I am looking at online.

Activity
This very kind blogger has made a free downloadable timeline of life available in this post that I will modify and use.

Lesson 3, The Coming of Human Beings
Book
Begin reading From Then to Now by Christopher Moore. Plan to continue with this while doing Lessons 4 and 5.

Poster
Human Evolution

Visual
We will print and attach this graphic to the Human Evolution poster.

Activity
We will watch this video from the Smithsonian’s exhibit: What Does It Mean to Be Human?

Lesson 4, The History of Language
Book
Ox, House, Stick: The History of Our Alphabet

Activity
We will watch The History of Writing- A Brief History of Writing, an amusing and, uhhm, patriotic amateur video.

Lesson 5, The History of Mathematics/ Numbers
Book
The History of Counting

Activity
We will watch The History of Mathematics that was created by a Montessori teacher.

We begin next week!