Kristin Draeger has mixed art, history, and humor into Ancient Greek Pottery to make this a great resource for you. This is part of the Art History Curriculum Disguised as Fun series that has engaging books for your student to learn about the art of various time periods. She has done a fantastic job in combining pictures of artifacts and giving details about each piece. Kristin has pronunciations of characters that are on the artifacts and also describes the pieces you are seeing. I appreciate that the text is simple because it does not detract from the pottery pieces. I have included a page from her book for you to see.

After you finish reading the pages you can go back through it as Kristin has a Hide-and-Seek game throughout the book. You can use this book in several ways: you can study the artifacts on each page in detail, use as a supplement to a history unit on Ancient Greece, research the pieces or period of time in which the art was created, take a field trip to your local art museum, do a study on Greek mythology, eat Greek food (yum!), Read the Newberry Honor book,  The Golden Goblet, or read the Percy Jackson series. If you are interested in reading a synopsis of each Percy Jackson book and perusing the teacher ideas that are on the website, click HERE .

I love Kristin’s humor and wish I could spend a day with her at an art museum. But, since that isn’t possible, her book is the next best thing. You can see the series for yourself by going to Kristin’s website: artk12.com

I also received the book, Mission Architecture: Disguised as Fun and this is a study in mission buildings. The comments of the cartoon characters that Kristin has throughout the book were comical and at the same time relatable as I have a tendency to talk about objects in obscure terms too!  There is a Hide-and-Seek in this book too;  can you locate the daisy? I know very little about architecture and have never seen a mission building, so I think this is a great introduction and springboard for further investigation.

Ways this book could be used is to do a study about the mission buildings in California. Here is a site to learn more about them- California Missions Trail.  The picture below is from another site that has a summary of the missions and details about each of them. California Missions Foundation.

Other ideas for using this book: do the Hide-and-Seek that Kristin has created; have your children trace and color the state of California; calculate the distance from the northernmost mission to the southernmost mission; research the other missions that are throughout the state; write a report on one of the buildings, or choose an architectural element throughout the book to research or draw. Perhaps by reading this book, you would be interested in learning about Califonia history. Beautiful Feet Books has a  curriculum designed for 4th-6th graders that uses trade books set in Califonia as part of the curriculum. To learn more about it CLICK HERE.

 Have fun!  ~Lisa~

I received a free review copy of this book from the author/publisher in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.