Grade 6 · secular
This is a year-long tour of the ancient world — early farmers, then Mesopotamia, Egypt and Kush, India, China, Greece, and Rome — ending with Rome's fall. Your child learns why cities and kings and laws showed up where and when they did, not just names and dates. Along the way they practice reading old documents skeptically (who wrote this, and why should I believe them?), reading maps and timelines, and writing short arguments backed by evidence. Every religion or belief system in the course is studied the way a historian studies it — what people believed and how it shaped their laws and daily life — never as something to practice or adopt.
The whole year, in plain English. Tap any unit to see every skill inside, nothing is hidden.
This is the toolbox unit. Your child learns a seven-part checklist for what makes a society a 'civilization,' how farming surplus let some people stop farming and start specializing, how to read BCE/CE dates without getting turned around, and how to size up a document or object instead of taking it at face value.
Explain why agricultural surplus allowed some members of a farming society to become specialists rather than food producers.
Classify a described ancient settlement as hunter-gatherer or farming based on evidence of food storage, tools, and settlement permanence.
Apply the seven criteria of civilization (surplus food, specialization, social hierarchy, organized government, religion, arts/writing, cities) to determine whether a described settlement qualifies.
Compare two primary-source artifacts from the same site to identify what each can and cannot reveal about daily life.
Explain why a given historical source might be biased by identifying who created it and what they may have wanted others to believe.
Place a set of unfamiliar historical events on a timeline using BCE/CE conventions and calculate the number of years between two BCE dates.
Argue, using a physical and a political map of the same region, whether river access or fertile soil better explains where an early farming settlement is likely located.
Judge whether a newly described settlement, never discussed in class, should count as a civilization, and defend the judgment against a plausible counter-argument.
Generalize the civilization checklist to argue whether the word 'civilization' itself is a fair, unbiased label for ranking societies.
Recall the definitions of surplus, specialization, and the seven civilization criteria using correct academic vocabulary.
This is the first real case study: the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Your child sees the whole chain in action — extra grain, then specialized jobs, then walled cities, then organized religion, then writing, then law — and finishes by looking closely at Hammurabi's Code to ask who a law actually protects.
Given a map of the Fertile Crescent, students label the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and explain why Sumerian cities formed between them.
Students classify a list of Sumerian jobs (priest, farmer, scribe, soldier, potter) according to whether they existed before or after surplus food freed people from farming.
Students explain why Sumerian city-states developed organized religion and a priest class as a way to manage surplus and explain natural events.
Students compare cuneiform's original administrative purpose (tracking grain and debts) to a modern record-keeping system and identify what changed and what stayed the same.
Students infer, from an excerpt of Hammurabi's Code, which social group (noble, commoner, slave) the law was most likely written to protect.
Given an unfamiliar law from a modern school or community rulebook, students determine whose interests it most protects, using the same reasoning applied to Hammurabi's Code.
Students evaluate whether Hammurabi's Code was fair, judged by the standards of Babylonian society rather than modern standards, citing specific laws as evidence.
Students generalize, from Sumer and Akkad, a rule for what conditions allow a city-state to expand into an empire, and test that rule against a hypothetical unstudied city-state.
Students identify the origin, likely purpose, and audience of a primary source (a cuneiform tablet, a code excerpt, or a royal inscription) before using it as evidence.
Students recall the specific named contributions of Sumerian civilization: cuneiform, the wheel, irrigation systems, and the ziggurat.
A second river-valley case, tested against both the Unit 1 checklist and the Unit 2 pattern. Your child studies Nile geography, hieroglyphics, the pharaoh as god-king, mummification, and then Kush's long, shifting relationship with Egypt — including the stretch where Kushite kings ruled Egypt.
Explain how the Nile's predictable annual flooding shaped Egyptian agriculture, settlement, and government planning.
Recall the correct order of the Old, Middle, and New Kingdom periods, including the Intermediate Periods between them.
Compare hieroglyphics and cuneiform on their materials, use, and how each was eventually deciphered.
Explain why Egyptians believed the pharaoh was a god and connect that belief to the concept of ma'at.
Sequence the six main steps of Egyptian mummification and explain the purpose behind the order.
Infer what mummification and pyramid construction reveal about what Egyptians valued, using evidence of cost and labor scale.
Explain how Kush's political relationship with Egypt changed across roughly a thousand years, including the period of Kushite rule over Egypt.
Critique a primary source about Kush written by an Egyptian or Roman author for whose perspective it represents and what it likely omits.
Generate a plausible explanation for why Meroe became a center of ironworking, given its location and resources, without being told the answer directly.
Construct a comparative organizer and paragraph that identifies one clear difference between Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilization and its likely geographic or historical cause.
The course's focus shifts from law codes to belief systems as the thing that justifies social order. Your child looks at the Indus Valley's still-undeciphered writing, then the caste system, then Hinduism's dharma-karma-reincarnation cycle and Buddhism as a historical reaction to it, closing with the Maurya Empire and Ashoka.
Students will locate the Indus, Ganges rivers and the cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro on a map and describe one geographic feature that supported early settlement.
Students will explain why the Indus script remaining undeciphered limits what historians can claim about Harappan society, using specific examples of what evidence does and does not tell us.
Students will classify a described ancient Indian person's role (priest, warrior, merchant, laborer, or outside varna) based on details about their occupation and birth.
Students will compare how Hinduism and Buddhism each answer the question of how to end suffering, connecting each answer to its underlying belief about the self.
Students will infer why a caste-based social order might be difficult for a member to leave, using evidence about occupation, marriage, and birth from primary and secondary sources.
Students will critique an excerpt from an Ashoka edict by identifying what the author wanted his subjects to believe and what evidence would be needed to confirm his claims.
Students will generate an argument, using evidence from two unfamiliar belief-system excerpts never discussed in class, about whether the excerpts' authors would agree or disagree about the nature of the self.
Students will evaluate whether the Maurya Empire under Ashoka meets the Unit 1 civilization checklist criteria, citing specific evidence for each criterion.
Students will summarize the sequence of Aryan migration, Vedic period, and rise of the caste system as a chronological chain of cause and effect.
How Chinese dynasties claimed the right to rule through the Mandate of Heaven, and how Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism each answered the same question differently: how should a ruler keep order? It closes with Qin Shi Huang's harsh standardization and the Han dynasty's more bureaucratic approach.
Explain how the Huang He's flooding pattern shaped where early Chinese farming settlements formed and what problems those settlements had to solve.
Identify the function of oracle bones as a tool for divination and early record-keeping in Shang China.
Explain the logic of the Mandate of Heaven as a claim that connects natural disaster or military defeat to loss of a ruler's legitimacy.
Apply the dynastic cycle pattern to a previously unstudied dynasty's rise-and-fall narrative to predict where in the cycle it sits.
Compare Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism as three different answers to the same problem of how a ruler should maintain order.
Attribute specific Qin Shi Huang policies (standardized script, currency, roads, laws) to Legalist principles of centralized control.
Evaluate a primary-source excerpt attributed to a ruler or philosopher to determine what the author wanted readers to believe about power.
Explain how Han Dynasty bureaucracy (civil service exams, appointed officials) extended Confucian ideas into practical government structure.
Generate an original argument for which philosophy (Confucianism, Daoism, or Legalism) should govern an unfamiliar institution never discussed in class (e.g., a sports team or a company), using the same criteria applied to rulers.
Explain how Han Dynasty trade routes later called the Silk Road connected China to distant regions without full mutual awareness between civilizations.
Twenty-five days on Greek city-states as competing answers to one question: who should get to hold power? Your child compares Athenian democracy to Spartan oligarchy, looks at who counted as a citizen, studies Greek myth and religion, follows the Persian Wars, meets Socratic questioning, and ends with Alexander spreading Greek culture.
Explain how Greek mountainous and island geography favored the rise of independent, competing city-states rather than one unified kingdom.
Classify a described Athenian resident (adult male landowner, woman, foreigner, enslaved person) as citizen or non-citizen using Athenian citizenship criteria.
Compare Athenian democracy and Spartan oligarchy on who holds power and how decisions get made.
Recall the sequence of major Persian War events (Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis) and their outcomes.
Explain why the Greek victory in the Persian Wars is treated as a turning point for the development of Athenian democracy and confidence.
Infer the function a specific Greek myth served (explaining a natural event, reinforcing a value, entertaining) from its content and context.
Compare Greek polytheism's human-like, myth-driven gods to at least one previously studied belief system (Egyptian, Vedic/Hindu-Buddhist, or Chinese) on the criterion of how gods relate to human behavior.
Evaluate a primary source excerpt (Pericles' Funeral Oration or similar) for whose interests it represents and what it leaves out.
Summarize the central claim and method of one Greek philosopher (Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle) from a short adapted text.
Generate a written argument, in an assigned Athenian citizen or non-citizen role, taking a policy position and explaining how citizenship status shapes that position or its exclusion.
Explain how Alexander's conquests spread Greek culture into a wider Hellenistic world beyond the original city-states.
Rome from its founding legend through Republic to Empire, using the same checklist and empire/citizenship ideas built all year. The spine question: does expanding citizenship make a state stronger or harder to govern? Your child compares Rome's republic to Greek democracy, follows Julius Caesar's rise, looks at Pax Romana's engineering and law, and weighs the causes of Rome's decline.
Students explain how Rome's geography (peninsula, Tiber River, central Mediterranean location) shaped its expansion and trade.
Students compare the founding legend of Romulus and Remus with archaeological evidence about early Rome's origins.
Students classify Roman social groups (patricians, plebeians, slaves, women) by the political rights each group held under the Republic.
Students explain how the Roman Republic's system of consuls, Senate, and vetoes was designed to check the power of any one person.
Students infer why the Senate could not stop Julius Caesar's concentration of power, using evidence about the late Republic's political crises.
Students argue, using a document set of Roman law, a senator's speech, and a plebeian's account, whether expanding citizenship strengthened or weakened Rome.
Students summarize the central claim and evidence of a primary source excerpt about daily life under Pax Romana.
Students explain how Roman engineering (roads, aqueducts, concrete) supported control of a large empire.
Students differentiate how Rome adapted Greek gods and myths versus inventing wholly new religious ideas.
Students evaluate which of several proposed causes of Rome's fall (economic, military, political, geographic) was most significant, using evidence from multiple sources.
Students recall the definitions of republic, citizen, patrician, plebeian, and consul introduced or reused in this unit.
No new civilization here — 13 days spent tracing legacies (law, writing, government, belief) across all seven societies studied this year, and building toward the year's final argument about which legacy reached furthest into the modern world.
Students will correctly sort a mixed set of 14 legacy artifacts (law excerpts, writing samples, government terms, belief statements) into the civilization that produced them.
Given a blank 7-row, 4-column legacy grid, students will fill in the correct term (law, writing, government, or belief item) for a named civilization and category, using the same grid format practiced on Day 1.
Students will explain, for one chosen legacy category, why it originated as a practical solution (e.g., writing for grain records, law for disputes) rather than for its later famous use.
Students will construct a cause-and-effect chain of at least four linked steps showing how a specific ancient idea (e.g., Roman law, the alphabet, the Mandate of Heaven) reached a named modern institution or practice.
Students will compare two civilizations' versions of the same legacy category (e.g., Hammurabi's Code and Roman Twelve Tables) and identify one genuine similarity and one genuine difference in function or reach.
Students will evaluate a primary-source claim of a ruler's own greatness (e.g., an inscription) for what it reveals about the ruler's intent versus what actually happened.
Students will generate a claim answering 'which ancient civilization's version of a chosen legacy had the widest-reaching impact,' supported by evidence drawn from at least three different units.
Students will judge whether the claim 'the alphabet is the most important ancient legacy because it spread the farthest' is a strong or weak historical argument, and explain what evidence would strengthen or weaken it.
Students will draft a five-paragraph argumentative essay claiming which civilization's version of a chosen legacy had the widest-reaching impact, citing evidence from at least three units and addressing one counterargument.
From the parent guide
This is a year-long tour of the ancient world — early farmers, then Mesopotamia, Egypt and Kush, India, China, Greece, and Rome — ending with Rome's fall. Your child learns why cities and kings and laws showed up where and when they did, not just names and dates. Along the way they practice reading old documents skeptically (who wrote this, and why should I believe them?), reading maps and timelines, and writing short arguments backed by evidence. Every religion or belief system in the course is studied the way a historian studies it — what people believed and how it shaped their laws and daily life — never as something to practice or adopt.
Unit 1 · what to expect
This is the toolbox unit. Your child learns a seven-part checklist for what makes a society a 'civilization,' how farming surplus let some people stop farming and start specializing, how to read BCE/CE dates without getting turned around, and how to size up a document or object instead of taking it at face value.
The full guide covers all 8 units: where kids get stuck, what to say, and how to tell it's working. Included with the course.
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