Ancient History, A Literature Approach

by Rea Berg

Beautiful Feet Books

This study has been designed for junior and senior high students but includes literature recommendations for younger students so they can be studying the same time period. Using a literature-based approach, Rea Berg covers ancient history, focusing primarily on Egypt, Greece, and Rome.

Unlike most Beautiful Feet guides, this one relies also on a textbook for more comprehensive coverage. Streams of Civilization, Volume I (Christian Liberty Press) serves as this background text. It provides a broad scope, encompassing time from creation up through the Middle Ages. This ensures that students at the higher grade levels are covering all they should for a solid historical foundation. The text itself comes with chapter tests, and there are also tests with answer keys on each major period within the guide.

You will need to supply a Bible and a Bible atlas for use with the course. The basic literature pack includes the following literature and resource selections for the course: Pyramid by Macaulay, Augustus Caesar’s World by Foster, City by Macaulay, Tales of Ancient Egypt by Green, Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt by Payne, D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths, and The Children’s Homer by Colum.

The Jumbo Pack includes books needed for senior high level: all of the above plus Streams of Civilization volume 1, test booklet for Streams of Civilization, The Golden Goblet by McGraw, The Bronze Bow by Speare, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (with reader’s guide), Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, The Ancient Greeks by Nardo, Caesar’s Gallic Wars, and Quo Vadis? by Sienkiewicz. Other recommended literature is also listed in the guide.

Daily lesson plans tell you what parts of each book are to be read each day; provide study and discussion questions (not for all lessons); and describe writing, research, and notebook activities. Students maintain a notebook where they record results of research and reading, and where they paste and draw maps and pictures, illustrations, newspaper articles, and other information related to each topic they study. While this study is not as reflective of the Principle Approach as is the study done in Berg’s Literature Approach to Medieval History, it does utilize that approach to learning to some extent. However, the study does not require a prior familiarity with the Principle Approach.

The study can easily be stretched to include younger children as you read through some of the books together.