Roman Coins: Art, Math and History All In One Lesson

Now we are studying Rome and one of the suggestions in the art curriculum is to look at Roman coins. This is a really neat idea which never would have occurred to me.

We are also studying Roman Numerals in math.  Then the idea struck me that we could combine these things into an activity, so I got out some Sculpy

and had the boys make their own Roman coins.

Making pictures of Roman rulers on them was a bit difficult...

but they were able to mark them with Roman numerals.

My youngest student only put the easiest numerals on them,

but the third and fourth students were interested in putting more sophisticated numerals on them and we reviewed what was happening in history during the time of these dates. Of course the Romans would have dated their own coins differently as they started with the founding of Rome and not Jesus' birth, but we let that go and just used our current dating system.

They seemed to like the fact that they could determine their own level of difficulty in the various aspects of this activity. They also were happy to help each other out in making the Roman numerals or determining what has happening at that time in history.

Another excellent idea from Almost Unschoolers is to make cookies in the shape of Roman Numerals and arrange some of the cookies, according to all of the ages of the people in your family, on a plate. Then the kids have to find their correct age in Roman numerals, before they can have their cookies.