Ancient Greece activities: Girls jump on a seesaw
Designing a Greece project
If you’re a teacher, parent, or day camp counselor thinking of spending a week or so on the Greeks, here’s some ideas for ancient Greece activities other people have found useful.
Greek clothes:
To dress as a Greek boy, an extra-large white T-shirt with a belt will look fine. It should reach their knees. Bare feet or sandals are good, and a cloak can be any largish piece of solid-color cloth – it should also reach their knees, and can be knotted on the shoulder or pinned with a brooch.
More on Greek clothes
All our ancient Greece articles
Greek boys playing field hockey
To dress as a Greek girl, a long white nightgown is a good place to start. It should reach their ankles. Then on top of that, take a white or solid-colored sheet. Hold it up against them so the long sides are parallel to the ground.
Fold it over so that the dress reaches from their neck to the ground, with the fold on the side away from their body. Now fold the sheet in half, with the child in the middle, so they have half of the sheet behind them and half in front of them, and it goes under their left arm.
Greek girls playing knucklebones (ca. 200 BC, now in British Museum)
Pull up on the front and back over each shoulder, and pin the cloth over their shoulders. Now the dress is done except it is open all down the right side. Add a sash to hold the right side closed.
Greek girls also wore bare feet or sandals and had cloaks like the boys, only sometimes the girls wore their cloaks over their heads or even their faces, like veils.
Greek food:
Pita-bread pizzas with olive oil, feta cheese, mushrooms and/or onions (no tomatoes!), or artichokes are appropriate; so is lentil soup, or barley soup. You could have a green salad with it, with lettuce, spinach, onions, and cucumbers, and oil and vinegar dressing; for dessert honey on bread, or yogurt with honey and walnuts, or baklava.
Easy lentil soup recipe
Recipes for barley soup or pudding
When did people start to raise bees?
More on Greek food
Greek music:
Ancient Greece activities: Woman playing double pipes (Athens, ca. 500 BC)
Pipes and stringed instruments and drums are all okay. A recorder, a small harp, and a tom-tom drum would be good. We don’t really know what Greek music sounded like, so you can play whatever you like.
What did Greek music sound like?
Listen to (maybe) Greek music
More on Greek music
Activities:
Olympic games
Greek Play reading
Greek Vase-painting
Bibliography and further reading ideas for Ancient Greece activities:
Hands-On Ancient People, Volume 2 : Art Activities about Minoans, Mycenaeans, Trojans, Ancient Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans (2004) For kids ages 9-12.
Ancient Greece!: 40 Hands-On Activities to Experience This Wondrous Age (Kaleidoscope Kids), by Avery Hart, Paul Mantell, and Michael P. Kline (1999). Gives ideas to get kids thinking, rather than step-by-step instructions.
