Essential Question
How do we know what happened before us, and why did civilization first arise between two rivers?
This first week opens the whole journey. The student learns what history actually is, how historians and archaeologists recover the past from clues, and then meets the world's first civilization in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates. Sumer gives us cities, writing, law, and the wheel; it also gives us a chance to begin our notebook, our map drawing, and the habits of careful thinking that the rest of the year depends on.
Liturgical note: Ordinary Time (early autumn). The Feast of Sts. Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, the Archangels, falls on September 29, and St. Michael is our saint of the week.
Threads at a Glance
What history is; archaeology and primary sources; Sumer and Mesopotamia — cuneiform, ziggurats, city-states, the wheel, the first laws
First Americans: peopling the continent and culture regions
Hammurabi and his Code of Law
The Fertile Crescent; draw the Tigris-Euphrates river system and the Middle East landmass
Prehistoric and Mesopotamian art — Lascaux cave paintings, the Standard of Ur, the Ziggurat of Ur
The origins of music; oldest instruments; the Hurrian Hymn (oldest notated melody, c.1400 BC)
St. Michael the Archangel
Prudence (the charioteer of the virtues)
YOUCAT Part One intro — the human longing for God; why we can believe (Q1-Q4)
The sentence and the eight parts of speech (overview); nouns
The strong, complete sentence — clarity and sentence craft (diagnostic)
Weekly Writing Assignment
Write 8-10 complete sentences about life in a Sumerian city. Include at least one sentence of each of the four kinds you will meet later (statement, question, command, exclamation), and try to vary your sentence openings. This is a diagnostic, so write naturally and carefully; your parent will use it to see where to focus this year.
The Week
Close the Week
Add each date to your running timeline notebook — one color for World History, another for US History.
Unit Reading · Ancient World
by Eloise Jarvis McGraw
A clever enslaved girl in ancient Egypt becomes a double spy caught between two dangerous masters in a palace plot. A page-turner that brings the world of pharaohs, the Nile, and court intrigue vividly to life.
by Elizabeth George Speare
A young Jewish man burning with hatred for Rome is slowly changed when he encounters Jesus of Nazareth. A Newbery Medal novel set in the Holy Land during the Gospels.
by Rosemary Sutcliff
A young Roman officer journeys beyond Hadrian's Wall to recover the lost eagle standard of his father's vanished legion. The classic novel of Rome at the edge of its empire.
by Homer (a good verse or prose translation for teens)
The granddaddy of all adventure stories: the warrior Odysseus spends ten years fighting monsters, witches, and the sea itself to get home to his wife and son. A cornerstone of Western literature and a standard ninth-grade text, listed on the Cardinal Newman Society reading list.
by William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's gripping play about the assassination of Julius Caesar and the civil war that follows. Friendship, betrayal, mob politics, and one of the most famous speeches ever written. A staple of high-school reading lists (Seton, Memoria Press).
by Lew Wallace
Betrayed by a friend and sold into slavery, the young Jewish prince Judah Ben-Hur claws his way back to seek revenge — until his life crosses paths with Jesus. A thrilling tale of the famous chariot race, vengeance, and forgiveness; one of the most beloved Christian novels ever written.