Mesopotamia is a name for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, corresponding to modern-day Iraq, Kuwait, the northeastern section of Syria and to a much lesser extent southeastern Turkey and smaller parts of southwestern Iran. Download our worksheet and fact file collection today.
When teaching ancient Mesopotamia, it can be hard to make it relatable for the students. By showing them how it connects to and affects their lives, history becomes more real and tangible for students. One
Get information, lesson plans, printables, videos, and more for teaching your kids about ancient Mesopotamia.
Right now I’m in the process of creating a series of STEM projects for students who are studying Ancient Civilizations.. First stop, Ancient Mesopotamia! Ancient Civilizations has to be my favorite curriculum to teach. I find the ancient world fascinating, with all the different traditions, inventions, rituals, building structures, gods and goddesses.
Day 2. Ancient Mesopotamia (Hands-on History): Cook Sebetu Rolls. Bring learning alive about Ancient Mesopotamia by cooking these ancient Sebetu Rolls.
Explore the geography, social structure, and literature of Ancient Mesopotamia through free activities at StoryboardThat. Use our classroom resources today!
When teaching ancient Mesopotamia, it can be hard to make it relatable for the students. By showing them how it connects to and affects their lives, history becomes more real and tangible for students. One
Making a connection to the past through hands-on learning helps a child to remember what he has learned and develop critical thinking skills.
This free Lesson Plan for Kids Discover Mesopotamia will help you teach kids all about the birth of civilization, from the many inventions forged in this ancient era, like the wheel and writing, to the religious beliefs and myths that still seem current today.
Right now I’m in the process of creating a series of STEM projects for students who are studying Ancient Civilizations.. First stop, Ancient Mesopotamia! Ancient Civilizations has to be my favorite curriculum to teach. I find the ancient world fascinating, with all the different traditions, inventions, rituals, building structures, gods and goddesses.
History doesn't have to be boring - I swear! You can get your kids interested in history in many ways. Although, very few of those ways involve memorizing names and dates. That's just not interesting history for most of us. Games, activities, videos, timelines, maps, and of course, great books. Always great books. Unfortunately, great
GRAPES is a great way to introduce an ancient civilization to students. Use this chart to help guide your teaching and student learning. ...
Resources and Ideas for teaching an Ancient Mesopotamia Interactive Notebook unit, Strategies and teaching tips for social studies.
These 11 Mesopotamia activities will make your Mesopotamia unit much more engaging for your students! Our favorite is...
Hands-on Geography Mesopotamia: Fun Salt Dough Map.
As I stated in a previous post about Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Theory, I recently finished my unit at school on ancient Mesopotamia. As part of my “post mortem” on the unit, I made a list of project ideas for possible implementation in the future. I classified the ideas based on MI and subject matter, and perhaps next year I’ll do a differentiated, more immersive unit allowing students to choose different projects on different aspects of Mesopotamia and utilizing different intelligences. Naturally, many of the projects crossover from one intelligence to the other. Some of these project ideas are what I would really call “mini-projects.” That is, they might take a day or two rather than a week or more. Most of them aren’t tested either, but I really think there are a few good ideas. Verbal/Linguistic Intelligence Project Ideas Geography of Mesopotamia Write poem about the Tigris and Euphrates and their importance to the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia. Write a report comparing and contrasting the geography of ancient Mesopotamia with the geography of the area today. Make travel brochure for a trip back to a city in ancient Mesopotamia. Research and write reports about different aspects of the geography of Mesopotamia - the Tigris and/or Euphrates, the Zagros Mountains, the Taurus Mountains, the Persian Gulf, etc… Write diary entries about an expedition from the headwaters to the delta of the Tigris or Euphrates. Roles in Mesopotamian Society Write and deliver a speech convincing the citizens of ancient Mesopotamia that they should pay taxes to support government projects such as city walls, irrigation canals, roads, etc… Day in the life of a scribe journal entries – journal/diary entries that describe the daily tasks of a scribe or a scribe student. Hall of Fame Mesopotamia – biographical descriptions of important Mesopotamians (Sargon, Hammurabi, Moses, Nebuchadnezzar, etc…). Maybe have the class or groups rank them based on importance and have a debate on who should be in and who should be out. Mesopotamian Achievements Write an extension story for one of the stories in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Write and perform a play retelling the Epic of Gilgamesh, or part of it, in a modern way. Write a radio, TV, or print ad selling one of the many Mesopotamian inventions. Write a proposal to King Hammurabi explaining why you like/dislike certain laws in his code. Have a debate on whether or not Hammurabi’s Code was a fair way to govern ancient Babylon. Writing in cuneiform. Provide a cuneiform style alphabet (worksheets with these are available from various sites. You can also get a computer font that allows you to type in cuneiform.) Have students decode phrases you make up and have them write/translate back and forth. Phoenician alphabet – Have students code phrases in the Phoenician alphabet (many textbooks have the alphabet printed in them). This is a bit easier that with the cuneiform assignment because they actually had an alphabet! Phoenician trade log – students make a log of imports/exports to Phoenicia including where they came from or went. Culminating Mesopotamia Projects Mesopotamia Times Newspaper – write articles, want ads, classifieds, editorials, etc and create a newspaper. Maybe require that the articles each cover a news story dealing with a different aspect of Mesopotamian life – government, music, art, religion, etc… Visual/Spatial Intelligence Project Ideas Geography Compile a list of ancient Mesopotamian cities and the dates they were founded and make a timeline. Maps, maps, maps. Being a visual person myself, maps are always good. I have my students label a map of Mesopotamia and the surrounding area. Coloring maps is also quite satisfying. Also fun is making maps using color to show the different empires that ruled over Mesopotamia. Mesopotamian City Map – have students make an overhead map of what a Mesopotamian city probably looked like. Maybe they can make inset pictures on the map showing close-ups of the ziggurat, market, houses, etc… Roles in Mesopotamian Society Social classes of Mesopotamia Art/Diagram – have students make a graphic organizer showing the various social classes of ancient Mesopotamia. Allow them to get “out there” if they choose and get really creative, metaphorical, and expressive in how they make their diagrams/organizers. Mesopotamian Achievements Analysis of the Standard of Ur – have students look at a photo, diagram, drawing, or other representation of the Standard of Ur and have them try to figure out what is says/means. Then discuss what archaeologists/historians/etc think it means. Have students draw a Standard of Y (Y being whatever you want – your school, state, country, the students’ lives, etc..) The standard shows different important events, people, etc., just like the Standard of Ur. Epic of Gilgamesh Comic Book – students tell the story in comic book form including comic-style drawings, dialogue, and/or captions. Hammurabi’s Code Art – Students pick various laws from Hammurabi’s Code and depict them in visual form. As an extension/alternative to the Social Classes Diagram, they could make pictures to show how different social classes would be treated under the law according to Hammurabi. Visual Almanac of Mesopotamian Achievements – students draw pictures and write brief informational captions about some of the many achievements/inventions of the Mesopotamians. Draw a picture/diagram of a Phoenician marketplace. Culminating Projects Mesopotamia Collage - Have students use the computer to find photos (or magazines, if available) to make a collage showing different aspects of Mesopotamian civilization. Make a picture book of Mesopotamian life to include everything from its geography to the rule of Babylon, etc…Making a PowerPoint of this might be fun too. Bodily/Kinesthetic Project Ideas Geography Make a raised relief map model of Mesopotamia. Create a mime or other silent drama presentation dealing with the geography of Mesopotamia. Example: A silent play depicting travel from the headwaters of the Tigris or Euphrates to the delta at the Persian Gulf, perhaps with a side trip to the desert of course. Build a model/diorama of a Mesopotamian city. Roles in Mesopotamian Society Write and perform a skit showing interaction between the Mesopotamian social classes. A scribe school skit Dance of the Mesopotamian Farmers – showing what must have been the daily routine of Mesopotamian farmer Create and perform a mime showing….Mesopotamian farming, scribing/writing, a priest-king ruling his people, the role of priests/priestesses Mesopotamian Achievements Build a model or make a diorama of a ziggurat. Build a replica of the Standard of Ur. Make a Mesopotamian-style sculpture. Create a mode/diorama of Mesopotamian farm. A real growing farm with flowing water and a irrigation system would be..HOLY COW, so cool! Build models/dioramas of Mesopotamian inventions (the wheel, chariot, etc…) Make a usable clay tablet and stylus. Reenact a Mesopotamian battle using figurines or make a fixed, frozen battle scene. Make a model/diorama of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Make a sculpture of Gilgamesh. Mesopotamian religion skit Hammurabi’s Code mock trial skit depicting Phoenician trade domination Create and perform an interpretative dance (with/without music) showing a Mesopotamian myth. dance depicting the events shown on either panel of the Standard of Ur Mime a Mesopotamian myth or parts of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Try to make a trade without saying anything (somewhat simulates trading with someone that speaks a different language). Logical/Mathematical Project Ideas Geography Use Excel to make graphs like climographs, population density graphs, harvest record graphs, or whatever other statistical data you can find on Mesopotamia. Use a mapping program to create maps using similar data Create a game in which players have to travel through Mesopotamia, facing various geographical hazards, challenges, etc… Achievements Mesopotamian Math – The Mesopotamians based their math on 60. Here’s some “stuff” including a Mesopotamian math worksheet. Playing with cuneiform and/or the Phoenician alphabet is quite logical/mathematical. Kids tend to really like writing in and/or translating language to and from the ancient languages. Culminating Projects Play Empires! – This game from Interact has a lot of math (keeping records) and logic/strategy in it. This game is better if you have a blocked style class with more than just a 50 minute period. 50 minutes is pretty short to do the lessons without rushing and stressing yourself and the students out. Having said that, it does cover most of the content of my Mesopotamia unit in a fun and engaging way. Design and play a Mesopotamia game – I had some students do this a few years ago in another class and on another subject. It was great! They came up with really fun (ingenious, in some cases) games to play with classmates. Design Mesopotamian puzzles – make word searches, crossword puzzles, vocabulary scrambles, etc…Or get pictures from the web, magazines, or other source and actually make a jigsaw puzzle! Make a timeline of Mesopotamian history – you can make these fairly easily on the computer with the right software, such as Inspiration 8.0 Musical Project Ideas Culminating Projects National anthems can be a fun way to integrate music into the curriculum. Just have the students write national anthems for each civilization (or even city-states) of ancient Mesopotamia. This reinforces the important characteristics while providing an avenue to explore musical interests. Of course, this could also go with verbal/linguistic. Students these days (boy that makes me sound old) really like making raps. Raps can be about everything from how the rivers made life in Mesopotamia possible to how the Babylonians conquered Mesopotamia, etc, etc…It’s really fun if you let them dress up for their performances. A musical play – your students may or may not be familiar with musical theatre (i.e. The Music Man, The Sound of Music, etc.). This could be a fun way to include music in the history curriculum. Have the class write a play complete with dialogue and songs. Of course this project would require a substantial time investment to be worthwhile. I bet it would be fun though! Naturalist Project Ideas Research the deserts of Mesopotamia and write a report, make a diorama, etc… Research the marshlands of Mesopotamia and write a report, make a diorama, etc… Find out what plant and/or insect species your area and Mesopotamia have in common and collect specimens. Examine how the Persian Gulf has receded and land reclaimed by the desert since the time of ancient Mesopotamia. Make a model, write a paper, make a poster, etc… Research how nature fit into the religion of the ancient Mesopotamians. Make a booklet, brochure, report, etc… Make a monster index of animals/monsters encountered in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Draw pictures and make a little booklet out of it. (or PowerPoint, poster, etc…) Make a boy/girl scout handbook of ancient Mesopotamia showing how to survive in that environment. Interpersonal Project Ideas Basically any project done in a group Different groups with different projects, i.e. a Verbal/Linguistic group, a Visual/Spatial group, etc… Skits, skits, skits Intrapersonal Project Ideas Any project done individually If I were a geographical feature of Mesopotamia, I would be…and why, of course. If I could travel to the region of Mesopotamia, where I would go and why.
This Ancient Mesopotamian Ziggurat Activity is a fun, easy, hands-on way to teach your children about Ancient Mesopotamia and bring history to life.
Includes vocabulary: Mesopotamia, Euphrates, Tigris, Fertile Crescent, Ziggurat, City-State, Mudbrick, Irrigation, Cuneiform, Chariot, Scribe, & Potter's Wheel
Learn about Ancient Mesopotamia with this Epic of Gilgamesh for Kids hands on history lesson for elementary age students.
This week, the older elementary children at school and Blaze started learning about Ancient Mesopotamia. We've been doing worksheets about cuneiform, the writing of ancient Mesopotamia: Blaze and I watched this movie Monday night and I will be showing it to the kids at school tomorrow morning. It's part of a series about ancient civilizations. I also found this coloring page for the children to do, just incase the movie ends before the end of the class period: http://highland.hitcho.com.au/sumeriancitycolor.pdf The following website is a great resource for children learning about ancient Mesopotamia: http://mesopotamia.mrdonn.org/ Last night, I discovered a rap song that tells all about ancient Mesopotamia. I just wish the sound quality on this recording was a little better. Silly Music Video: This was a strange co-incidence. I was working on lesson plans about Mesopotamia for Blaze this week, when DH turned on the t.v. just as Capt. Picard on Star Trek :The Next Generation started telling the story of Gilgamesh.
Resources and Ideas for teaching an Ancient Mesopotamia Interactive Notebook unit, Strategies and teaching tips for social studies.
With this project, kids learn how this ancient civilization invented a system to grow crops.
Learn about the most advanced ancient civilization in this fun, hands on Ancient Mesopotamia History Unit. This is fun for kids of all ages.
Ancient Civilizations have long been my favourite units to teach. I remember loving them when our teacher taught us about them in Middle School, they were some of my favourite courses I took in university, and I still love teaching them today. Mesopotamia is always a fun one to teach, simply because a lot of it is still really new to the kids; a lot of them have background information about Egypt, Greece, and Rome, but very little about Mesopotamia. I feel like I am working with a blank slate when it comes to teaching about this period of history. For a good introduction, and to build excitement about the unit to come, I feel you can never go wrong with Crash Course World History. This is a great one of their videos about Mesopotamia. I always like doing a map with the kids at the start of a unit. It's a great opportunity to work in some geography skills, and is a good way to ensure the kids know the area we are actually talking about. I am always alarmed with how few of them are able to use an atlas and label areas on a map - definitely an area we need practice on. We spend a lot of our unit talking about farming, as the fertile crescent really is Mesopotamia in a nutshell. Vocabulary is usually where we start. I really love this vocabulary foldable, as it allows the kids to flip and quiz each other on the words. Reading about the farming of the fertile crescent is our next step. I am not a fan of our current textbooks, as it feels like they were written during the dark ages and are totally not engaging for the kiddos. I use these reading passages instead. They have questions and annotation activities to go with them, which is helpful. After reading, we make a fun foldable about the facts the kids find most important. We share our answers at the end - it is interesting to see what different facts stuck with each kid. If you are looking for these and other fun activities to do with your own class, be sure to check out some of my Mesopotamia Unit resources below!
This mega post contains all the resources and activities we did for our Ancient Mesopotamia Unit Study. Lots of free printables to download!
Right now I’m in the process of creating a series of STEM projects for students who are studying Ancient Civilizations.. First stop, Ancient Mesopotamia! Ancient Civilizations has to be my favorite curriculum to teach. I find the ancient world fascinating, with all the different traditions, inventions, rituals, building structures, gods and goddesses.
Resources and Ideas for teaching an Ancient Mesopotamia Interactive Notebook unit, Strategies and teaching tips for social studies.
Write Your Name in Cuneiform In today’s Literacy, we will be looking at Cuneiform, an ancient form of writing from Mesapotamia (now Iraq). You can use this site to write your “Monogram&…
Learn about the history of cylinder seals from Sumer in Ancient Mesopotamia and make your own in this fun, hands-on art lesson.
Learning about Ancient Mesopotamia? Check out these fun activities to do- cuneiform writing, pottery making, mud houses and LEGO Chariots!
This ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform activity is a fun, hands-on history experience. Become ancient scribes writing on clay tablets with reeds.
Ancient Civilizations have long been my favourite units to teach. I remember loving them when our teacher taught us about them in Middle School, they were some of my favourite courses I took in university, and I still love teaching them today. Mesopotamia is always a fun one to teach, simply because a lot of it is still really new to the kids; a lot of them have background information about Egypt, Greece, and Rome, but very little about Mesopotamia. I feel like I am working with a blank slate when it comes to teaching about this period of history. For a good introduction, and to build excitement about the unit to come, I feel you can never go wrong with Crash Course World History. This is a great one of their videos about Mesopotamia. I always like doing a map with the kids at the start of a unit. It's a great opportunity to work in some geography skills, and is a good way to ensure the kids know the area we are actually talking about. I am always alarmed with how few of them are able to use an atlas and label areas on a map - definitely an area we need practice on. We spend a lot of our unit talking about farming, as the fertile crescent really is Mesopotamia in a nutshell. Vocabulary is usually where we start. I really love this vocabulary foldable, as it allows the kids to flip and quiz each other on the words. Reading about the farming of the fertile crescent is our next step. I am not a fan of our current textbooks, as it feels like they were written during the dark ages and are totally not engaging for the kiddos. I use these reading passages instead. They have questions and annotation activities to go with them, which is helpful. After reading, we make a fun foldable about the facts the kids find most important. We share our answers at the end - it is interesting to see what different facts stuck with each kid. If you are looking for these and other fun activities to do with your own class, be sure to check out some of my Mesopotamia Unit resources below!
This Ancient Babylon unit will get your kids involved and learning more about Ancient Babylon through hands on activities and books.
These 11 Mesopotamia activities will make your Mesopotamia unit much more engaging for your students! Our favorite is...
A planned unit study for kids on the topic of Ancient Sumer. Includes videos, book recommendation and hands-on activities to learn with.
Resources and Ideas for teaching an Ancient Mesopotamia Interactive Notebook unit, Strategies and teaching tips for social studies.
When teaching ancient Mesopotamia, it can be hard to make it relatable for the students. By showing them how it connects to and affects their lives, history becomes more real and tangible for students. One
