The Book 'The First Drawing' by Mordicai Gerstein is an excellent introduction to prehistory, archeology as well as art history study. It is rich in it's contents and can be extended into a range of other activities.

We read this book and researched the animals of this time period using the Pleistocene Wildlife Cards from my shop. I allowed Lizzie to choose her favourite animal (a Smilodon) and we purchased a fossil kit, we build a replica skeleton and made a plaster skull. 

We watched a tour of Lascaux caves, France on YouTube and played the cave art game from my Etsy shop, to familirise ourselves with the common styles and shapes of cave art.

​Next we used scrumpled up packing paper and glued this inside a cardboard box, next we mixed PVA glue with a little play sand and painted this over the top of the paper, (creating a stone like feel to the inside of the box).

Lizzie drew her own interpretations of the cave paintings inside the box using charcoal and natural coloured chalk pastels. We finished up by displaying our smilodon fossils inside our cave.

This pack contains multiple activities, as always I suggest choosing 4-8 to set out at a time, when your child has fully explored the activity and is no longer engaging in it, swap it out for another. Below are just a few suggestions on inviting activities you can set up to accompany this study.

Visit to a wildlife park, explore African cultures, countries and other habitats from across this very diverse continent.

We are using this pack alongside the 'A Year of Tales' curriculum available from https://wilkinsonnest.com/a-year-of-tales.html - so I choose a quote from the pack that co-incides with the book we are currently studying (the language arts pack has a handy reference list matching the quotes to their book if you want to work through them this way). I choose one quote to work on for that week. And each day's lesson will last around 10 mins

I begin by introducing the quote we will be working on. We will read this together, my child reading any words they know / can sound out and I will fill in the ones they don't. We will read it a number of times till we are confident with the quote, and practice reciting it.

On day one we will also talk about any vocabulary words in the extract that my child does not understand. Then I will move on to highlighting any words that may prove tricky for spelling (as we are using a year of tales we will also combine this with the spelling list from the curriculum, looking for those words in the quote).

Finally I will have my child build the spelling and vocabulary words we've picked out of the quote. This beautiful letter set and board is from the wonderful 'Bless This Homeschool' - but you could also use a movable alphabet.

First of all we will practice reciting the quote if  we can, and then read the quote filling in any parts we can't remember. We will also have a quick practice building the spelling and vocabulary words we picked out in day one.

Today I provide my daughter with a tracing page of the quote (the pack comes with both pre-cursive and print versions to choose from). She then carefully traces over the quote focusing on letter formation and handwriting. I will allow her to work on this for no more than 5 mins (5 minutes of good concentration and effort), if the quote is not completed that is fine - we may come back to it tomorrow, or we may leave it and move on.

I watch carefully and make a note of any letters where the formation needs to be practiced, we follow this by using our wooden handwriting boards or a chalk board to practice those letters further. These beautiful wooden letter blocks are from 'Treasures from Jennifer'.

On day three we begin by having a quick recap of the quote (reciting if possible, reading if not), and practicing our spelling and vocabulary words. I may allow a little time to work on the tracing work from the previous day if it was not repeated. 

Next we use some of the grammar concept cards (I selected a small number that we wish to study and master over the year, ones that are appropriate for my 6 year old as well as ones she has shown an interest in), I have added colour coding to the cards.

We will talk about each concept and then see if there are any examples in the quote we have chosen and colour them to match. (There is at least one quote that specifically demonstrates each grammar concept in the pack, so if you would rather teach a specific concept you can take that approach)

On day 4 we again begin by recapping the quote and spelling words. Then I provide the matching copywork board. 

​On this board I have my daughter carefully copy the quote on the lines below in her neatest handwriting. This usually takes us 2 days to work on. I will also ask her to colour on the printed quote the grammar concepts she can recognise. This is the page that we keep to add to her 'portfolio of best work'. 

You may wish to use day 5 and one of the blank writing pages from the pack to dictate the quote to your child for them to write, we are not quite ready for dictation yet, but hope to be there soon.