Greek Mythology and Ancient Greece Thematic Unit

Ancient Greece Activities and Lesson Plans

These are activities you can do in your classroom during a study of Ancient Greece or Greek Mythology

Have the children each take a god or goddess and dress up as that character. Then play a Guess My Line type of game where the students ask questions and they have to guess the character of each person in the room.

Have each student or group or students design a temple to honor a particular god or goddess. These are easily made out of shoe boxes. Have them look at pictures of the Temple of Hera in Olympia and others for inspiration.

Have the students perform Reader's Theater with some of the Greek Myths. They can write their own scripts or you can purchase them.

Have the students make a newspaper called The Greek Times. Choose a time period in Greek history and have groups of students responsible for a page or article in the paper They can even make advertisements!

Research clothing in Ancient Greece. Have each student design their own costume and then have a fashion show.

Study the different pottery shapes from Ancient Greece. Then have students design their own pottery. You can make it out of self-hardening clay and then paint it, or the students can make their designs on construction paper and color it in.

Study the Greek alphabet. Have the students write "secret messages" to each other using the alphabet. Pour plaster of Paris into small meat trays and put a paper clip into plaster near the center top. This will act as a hanger when the plaster is dry. After the plaster has hardened, give each student a large nail. Have them write their name in Greek. When they are finished, spray paint the plaster with stone fleck paint or gray paint and they have a plaque with their name in Greek!

The Greeks didn't have a government like we do. They had city states called a polis. Divide class into groups. Each groups will be a polis - Athens, Sparta, Olympia, etc. Have each polis adopt their own government and laws.

Have a Greek food tasting party. Serve Greek pastries, grape juice for wine, hummus, feta cheese, ambrosia.

Research the Olympics and have a mock Olympics competition in your classroom. Students can compete in the long jump, frisbee throw, softball throw, relay races, etc.

Have individual students or groups each take an aspect of Greek civilization and create a PowerPoint page on that topic. Put all the pages together for a presentation.