SOTW Chapter 28: The Roman Empire

Chapter 28 covers the Roman gods, Roman builders, and Roman gladiators, all three of which interested the boys.  We have a couple of books about Ancient Rome, and we've also found some great books at the library.  The ones we've used the most so far are Life in Ancient Rome by Simon Adams, Gladiators and Ancient Rome by Anita Ganeri, and Gladiator by Richard Watkins (yes, they're pretty fascinated with gladiators!).

Our hands-on project for this chapter was making a model of a Roman aqueduct using sand dough.

Mixing the ingredients for the sand dough

Heating dough to thicken

It gets really thick--Aaron had to help stir!

Cutting out arches (pattern is from the activity guide)

First set of arches is ready for the oven!

Adding dough on the bottom to stabilize and a "cradle" on top to hold our "pipe"

The finished aqueduct!

Making a holding tank with pipes to let the water flow to different areas of the city

Assembling the pieces

Then he added a "city" using blocks and we tested our aqueduct:

We had fun, and it wasn't as complicated as I anticipated!  Just one word of advice, though--the sand dough scratches up the pan, so definitely don't use your best pot!