Ancient Greece: city and country

Ages 6 to 8 Read together, then try alone · about 20 minutes

Read together

Ancient Greece was not one country. It had many city-states such as Athens and Sparta.

Each city-state had its own rules, but they shared a language.

Do it

1. Find Greece on a map. Find Athens and the sea around it.
2. Say the Greek letters alpha and beta aloud. They gave us the word alphabet.
3. Draw a Greek temple with columns, or build one with cups and a tray.
4. Talk about how the New Testament was first written in Greek.

Talk about it

• What is a city-state?
• Which word comes from Greek?

For the grown-up

Greek city-states differed greatly, and ancient Greek society included slavery and limited rights, which should be mentioned honestly to older children. The word alphabet comes from alpha and beta.

Mark as done

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Where this comes from

• Cartledge, P., Ancient Greece: A History in Eleven Cities (Oxford University Press, 2009)
• The British Museum, learning pages on ancient Greece
• Aland, K., and Aland, B., The Text of the New Testament (Eerdmans, 1989)

Written with AI assistance and checked against the sources listed. Please read it before sharing it with a child.