Mayas, Incas, and Aztecs, Oh My!

For the past couple of months, we have been exploring the ancient civilizations of the Maya, Inca, and Aztec people.  Our DC Social Studies Standards indicate that first grade students should be able to, "Describe the characteristics of the Maya, Inca, and Aztec civilizations," including developing an understanding of their class structures, religious traditions, artistic and oral traditions, writing systems, and advances in astronomy, mathematics, and architecture.  It's a lot to cover and process for six-year-olds but we've been doing our best!

BrainPopJr.com

I began this unit by focusing on the Maya and using one of my favorite teaching tools: BrainPop Jr.!
(BrainPopJr.com has great animated videos on a variety of topics and the kiddos love them!)  We watched the Maya Civilization video and found out that archeologists have studied artifacts and ruins in Mesoamerica to learn about the ancient Maya. We also learned that the Mayans built pyramids and used hieroglyphics to communicate.  Some of the kiddos had heard of pyramids and hieroglyphics from Egypt, but interested to find out that other societies had them as well.

I planned various lessons to explore the different advances that the Maya people had made in writing, math, and astronomy:

• We watched a YouTube video of a calligrapher and Maya expert writing names in Mayan hieroglyphics and then the kiddos got to try to translate their own name into Mayan glyphs.  
• We learned how the Mayans did math, using symbols of sticks and shells and the kiddos got to solve math problems using Maya Math.
• We looked at photographs and artifacts (donated by a parent) of ancient Maya temples and calendars.

• We read fiction and nonfiction books about the Ancient Maya.  We used a series of nonfiction books called "True Books" and also picture books such as Rain Player, an original folktale inspired by ancient Maya culture.

We are currently preparing for our Spring "Museum Night" where we will showcase our learning about the ancient civilizations.  The kiddos are very excited to share with the families and friends all the information they have learned.  More on that to come...