Asalamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatu Mamas,
We’re almost wrapped up with our Ancient Rome study and though it’s taken much longer than expected the kids and I have had a brilliant time, alhamdulillah. 

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been working on building an Ancient Roman village, complete with houses, market stalls selling olives and bread, a public bath, aqueducts and an amphitheatre; I think our Roman village turned out wonderful, Allahuma barik.

The model is relatively easy to make too, and it’s likely you have everything already.

What you will need:
Large board
Several packs of airdrying clay
Toothpicks (optional)
Cardboard
Stapler
Tissue/sponge
Watercolour paints
Acrylic paints

We began by covering our board with a layer of air-drying clay.  This is optional, and admittedly more messy as the clay can crack and bits fall off as it dries but I loved the ‘cobbled’ effect this gave our village.  You can skip this altogether and just go straight onto the features of the village itself. If you decide not to use clay on the floor, use a sponge to achieve a similar cobbled floor effect, perhaps using two shades of the same colour.

We used our Usborne Ancient World History book for images, and each child and I took a different feature.  I would do this over a few days, so children can take their time with it.  And remember to have plenty of water to hand as air-drying clay dries quickly! 

The only thing we didn’t make entirely out clay was our colosseum.  This was purely due to the kid’s lack of enthusiasm so we made do we making a circular clay bottom and a strip of stapled cardboard to make the walls.  We then painted the strip white and added some detail, including toothpicks for the roof.  You could absolutely make this with clay though.

But I think the real beauty of our model was with the finish.  We used watercolours for the floors, and houses giving them a more subtle ‘stone’ finish and reserved the acrylic paints for other elements.  

The mix of both paints resulted in a beautiful replica Alhamdulillah.

I’ll be sharing more on our Ancient Rome study in another post insha’Allah!