1. Introduction to Ancient Greece

The final lesson in the Mega Greek course gets philosophical, with Plato telling the tale of Gyges and leading an ethical debate. In language work, we learn how to turn Greek sentences negative.

Wife of Zeus and queen of the gods, Hera introduces us to some aspects of home life – specifically food. After the language work (translating sentences), there’s a quiz about Greek food plus an optional tasting and recipe to make.

Lesson 8 is all about Greek inventions, so who better to guide us than the mythical master inventor, Daedalus. After looking at plural nouns in the language part of the lesson, we go on to explore Greek inventions and discoveries. We then demonstrate our own technical skills by making an Icarus flyer.

The epic poet Homer takes us on a tour of the various forms of entertainment enjoyed by the Ancient Greeks, and we end up in the theatre (Greek root word!) making masks. In the language learning, we put nouns and verbs together to make sentences.

Our guide for this lesson is Persephone, goddess of nature and reluctant queen of the Underworld. After looking at singular nouns in the language part of the lesson, we then go on to explore the myth of Persephone and the role of nature myths.

Nike is the Greek goddess of victory (and, yes, where the shoes get their name). In this lesson’s language focus, we look at present tense verbs. With Nike as our guide, we then move on to explore the original Olympics.

Greek art and architecture continues to be highly influential in modern times, as the craftsman god Hephaistus shows us in lesson 4. We also get the chance to be artists ourselves and create a clay acroterion.

The (slightly crazy) mathematician Pythagoras is your guide for lesson 3, where we’ll look at some maths root words, work some more on writing the Greek alphabet. After that, we’ll explore one of Pythagoras’ greatest interests, triangles with a snip-along class experiment.

Goddess of wisdom Athena will take you through lesson 2, which looks at science. After working on our Greek alphabet skills and looking at some Englisg science words with Greek roots, we’ll investigate the ancient science of astronomy and star maps.