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Watch the BrainPOP video and do the quiz.

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Check out some examples of encyclopedia entries and learn how to plan your own.

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What should you include in your encyclopedia page? Find out about the different parts here.

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What is an encyclopedia? Find out in this PowerPoint.

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Below, you can see some examples of previous students' work.

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Here's an example from a real children's encyclopedia

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I. Our main writing task for this unit is a children's encyclop(a)edia entry about Early Man. Use the information here to learn more about it.

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If you're interested in the science behind wheels, watch this BrainPOP video.

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Click on the animations to see how wheels developed.

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For thousands of years people have been building, migrating, and trading. These activities often required moving many objects, or one very large object from one place to another. Over time, the way items are transported has evolved. Today almost all forms of transportation involve this invention: the wheel. Watch the animations below to learn more about the invention of the wheel. What do you think will be the next step in transportation?
Click here for full screen More 6th-8th grade history activities
This activity can be found in the K12 Intermediate World History B course.

The entire course covers continuing a survey of World History from prehistoric to modern times, K12 online lessons and assessments complement the second volume of The Human Odyssey, a textbook series developed and published by K12. This course focuses on the story of the past from the fourteenth century to 1917 and the beginning of World War I. The course is organized chronologically and, within broad eras, regionally. Lessons explore developments in religion, philosophy, the arts, and science and technology.

The course introduces geography concepts and skills as they appear in the context of the historical narrative. Major topics of study include:

The cultural rebirth of Europe in the Renaissance

The Reformation and Counter-Reformation

The rise of Islamic empires

Changing civilizations in China, Japan, and Russia

The Age of Exploration, and the civilizations that had been flourishing in the Americas for hundreds of years prior to encounters with Europeans

The changes that came with the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment

Democratic revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

The Industrial Revolution and its consequences

Nineteenth century nationalism and imperialism

The remarkable transformations in communications and society at the turn of the twentieth century

Request a free catalog of K-12 Courses Request the Scope & Sequence for a course

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6th-8th Grade History Activity: The Invention of the Wheel - Learning Liftoff

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For thousands of years people have been building, migrating, and trading. These activities often required moving many objects, or one very large object from one place to another. Over time, the way items are transported has evolved. Today almost all forms of transportation involve this invention: the wheel.

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F. Everything we know about Early Man comes from archaeological findings. Archaeologists dig things out of the ground that tell us about people's lives in ancient times. Here you can learn about some famous Stone Age sites.

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Humans could now transport items more easily, as they had wheeled vehicles. This is an image of the Bronocice pot, which archaeologists believe shows the earliest picture of a vehicle with four wheels.

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People still wore animal skins, but it was even more likely that they were also making cloth for clothing.

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By the late Stone Age, humans had understood how to create fire for a long time. They were now putting it to new uses!

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Because humans were now growing their own food, they were able to settle in one place. They were no longer nomadic, moving from place to place to find wild food.

They started to built permanent homes from natural materials. This photo shows a reconstruction of what a late Stone Age house might have looked like.

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The last part of the Stone Age is called the Neolithic by scientists. It only lasted a few thousand years, but it was very important in our development.

By this time, humans had migrated all over the world, and lived on nearly every continent.

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E. In total, the Stone Age lasted over 3 million years. Over that period, humans developed a lot and their lifestyles became very different. In this section you can learn about late Stone Age life. You can see how their tools changed and learn about new skills they developed.

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Early humans were nomads. A nomadic lifestyle is when you move around a lot, instead of just living in one place for most of your life. Early Man had to move around to follow their sources of food.

For example, in the summer they might live in the north, catching fish and other wild animals, and collecting plants. But after a few months, winter would arrive - the animals would move to a warmer place, the water in the rivers would ice over and the plants would die. Therefore, the humans would move south to find new animals and warmer plants where the water wasn't frozen and plants were still growing.

Because of this lifestyle, Early man did not have a lot of possessions. They did not have any transport, so they could only take items they were able to carry or drag on the ground.

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As well as food, animals also provided humans with the materials to make clothing. Probably, animal skins were fastened together to make clothes. It is also possible that humans knew how to make cloth at this point

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The earliest humans were all hunter-gatherers. That meant they had two ways of getting food. Some people would hunt wild animals, bringing the bodies back to the other people in their tribe to eat. Other people would go and gather edible plants that were growing wild, such as leaves, roots and berries.

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Fire was very important in the development of humans, offering heat, light and protection. However, in the beginning humans did not know how to create fire. They could only use fire that they found from natural sources.

For example, if a bolt of lightning had set fire to a tree, they could use branches to 'collect' some fire for their own use.

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Early Man had to take shelter from bad weather and find somewhere safe to sleep at night. However, in the beginning they did not build their own shelters and had no permanent homes. Instead they would seek shelter in caves. This picture shows Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa, where archaeologists found early evidence for fire.

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Early humans first developed in the east of Africa.

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Listen to the text from p.1-3 of the Unit Book, covering the Big Bang and evolution of different kinds of animals.

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Are you curious about evolution? Watch the video to learn more.

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A. Welcome to the dawn of time! At first, there was nothing to see in our universe. However, after the Big Bang, life started to appear and evolve. Learn more about evolution in this section.

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This video explains how scientists have found proof that evolution happens.

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This website is like an online children's encyclopedia. Click around to learn all about the Stone Age!

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DK Find Out! | Fun Facts for Kids on Animals, Earth, History and more!

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Visit DK Find Out! to learn about dinosaurs, space, animals, nature & more. Fun learning activities for kids with videos, quizzes & galleries at DKFindOut.com

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Here are the steps showing how an early human would have made a hand axe.

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Q. What did Earth say to the other planets?

A. You guys have no life.

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None of these inventions would have been possible without the earlier invention of the wheel. Can you match the names below to the pictures of modern inventions?

flywheel/gyroscope

propeller

turbine

jet engine

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The invention of the wheel set the scene for many later technological developments. Can you match the names below to the types of wheels shown in the pictures?

water wheel

spinning wheel

astrolabe

cogwheel/cog

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When we think of wheels, we immediately think of vehicles - but they are not the only way to use wheels!

In fact, some scientists think wheels were originally used horizontally (flat). They were easier to use because they were just single wheels with one axle beneath them. It was much more difficult to stand two wheels upright (vertically) and join them together with a long axle, therefore the invention of carts and other vehicles didn't happen until later.

Below you can see an example of a single, horizontal wheel. This device was invented in the late Neolithic (at the very end of the Stone Age), around 3500BC. Do you know what it's called and what it was used for?

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Why was the invention of the wheel important?

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Why was the invention of the wheel important?

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Read p.8-9 in your Unit Book and watch the video about how wheels work if you need to. What do wheels help us to do? How do you think having wheels would have changed the lives of people in the late Stone Age?

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How do we know that people were using wheels?

Firstly, archaeologists might find ancient wheels in the ground.

Secondly, they might find pictures of wheels being used, even if they don't find the wheels themselves.

Below is a drawing of the Bronocice pot, a pot which was found at a Neolithic site in Poland. It dates to 3635-3370BC, making it over five thousand years old.

Archaeologists believe that on this pot you can see the oldest picture of a four wheeled vehicle in the world. Can you find it?

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Wheels help us move further and faster without increasing the amount of effort we need to put in. Here's how they work.

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The wheel was invented at the end of the Stone Age, in the Neolithic period.

The earliest wooden wheels (disks with a hole for an axle) appeared between 6500-4500BC.

The first wheeled vehicles appeared between 4500-3300BC. This is when the horse was domesticated. Remember that there were still no motors at that time!

We have evidence of early wheels from both the middle east and Europe. We don't know which group of people invented the wheel first.

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H. We have now looked at two important human developments - controlling fire (in the Lower or Middle Palaeolithic) and farming (in the Neolithic). We are going to look at one last important development - the invention of the wheel. This happened late on in the Neolithic.

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In the picture below you can see one important thing that fire offered - the chance to cook meat. This was a good way of killing bacteria. Scientists also think that being able to eat cooked proteins and vegetables improved humans' nutrition - maybe this is what allowed us to evolve as we did.

Can you think of other important benefits fire gave people? Look at the pictures below for ideas.

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Scientists aren't sure when people figured out how to create and control fire.

They are certain that people were controlling fire 125,000 years ago, in the Middle Palaeolithic. Evidence (including hearths, ovens and burnt bones) has been found all over the world, from Zambia to Hungary to China.

Many scientists think there is enough evidence to show that people were controlling fire 400,000 years ago, late in the Lower Palaeolithic.

Some scientists argue that fire was being controlled an amazing 1.7 million years ago, early in the Lower Palaeolithic. They point to evidence like the 1.7 million year old burnt animal bones found at a site in Yunnan Province in China. However, other scientists argue that they might have been burnt in a fire which started naturally.

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Around 6400BC, humans figured out how to bake clay at high temperatures to make pottery. They made bowls, plates and human figures.

The plate below is from the Halaf culture. It was made in Turkey between 6100-5100BC.

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The main change at the end of the Stone Age was that people learnt how to collect seeds from plants and grow their own crops. This is called agriculture. Around 8000BC they also learnt how to domesticate animals - for example, they could look after sheep and use their wool, milk and meat. The didn't have to hunt for wild sheep anymore.

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In the Neolithic period, people still used tools made from stone and wood. However, they mostly used polished tools instead of chipped ones. You can see the Neolithic tools below have very smooth surfaces and rounded ends, instead of the jagged tools from earlier times.

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The bow and arrow was invented around 30,000BC. The cave painting from Namibia below shows people using bows and arrows to hunt.

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Cave Paintings in the Upper Palaeolithic

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Cave Paintings in the Upper Palaeolithic

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These are the oldest known cave paintings which show people and animals. They were found in the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave in France.

They are 38-29,000 years old. The picture below shows paintings of rhinos.

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The last part of the "Old Stone Age" was the Upper Palaeolithic. Did you know that humans were already making music at that time?

This flute was made from animal bone around 40-35,000 years ago. It was found in Germany.

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Our ancestors were already starting to make art and crafts in the Palaeolithic era ("old Stone Age"). As well as developing their tools and weapons, they made bracelets, beads, rock art and body paint.

Below you can see some shells found in Blombos Cave in South Africa. They are between 100,000 and 70,000 years old. You can see that holes have been made in them so that they can be put on a string.

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These are the Schöningen Spears. They were found in Germany. They are over 300,000 years old. They are the oldest hunting weapons we have found. However, they are nowhere near as old as the hand axes above. You can see that, by this time, people had learnt to attach the sharp rocks to sticks in order to make different kinds of tools.

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Here are some more tools from early on the Stone Age. They are called hand axes - like an axe, but held in your hand, not tied to a stick. They were used around 1.7 million years ago.

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Have you ever seen any Stone Age tools in museums? Here is an example of a tool from the Lower Palaeolithic - the very earliest part of the Stone Age. Tools like this were used between 2.6 and 1.7 million years ago. This one was for chopping things.

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Horrible Histories - Stone Age Dragons Den

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Horrible Histories - Stone Age Dragons Den

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Horrible Histories Stone Age Dragons Den

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G. Just like today, Stone Age people were busy making new discoveries. The figured out how to make clothes for themselves, how to build shelter, how to farm food to eat and how to domesticate animals. But one of the most important inventions was a very early one - the ability to create and control fire.

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In the beginning, all animals were wild - but over time, people have domesticated some of them. In the video below, Jeff is trying to domesticated wolves. Which modern family pet is descended from wolves?

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Horrible Histories - Stone Age Family Fortune

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Horrible Histories - Stone Age Family Fortune

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What did Stone Age people do when somebody died? Find out in the video below!

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This picture shows a trepanated Neolithic skull. It belonged to a girl who lived around 3500BC. The hole was made in her skull using a flint tool.

As you can imagine, trepanning often led to death. However, the edges of this hole are very smooth because new bone has grown there. Therefore, we know that this girl was lucky and survived the 'operation'.

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Trepanning means cutting a hole in somebody's skull. That sounds like a terrible idea, right? Actually, it seems to have been quite common in the Stone Age - 5-10% of all Stone Age skulls found around the world have holes from trepanning. Although we can't go back in time and ask Early Man why they did it, it was probably done to try to treat health problems.

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Learn about "the ages of stone" in this song! The song explains the difference between the Palaeolithic ("old Stone Age", divided into Lower, Middle and Upper), the Mesolithic ("middle Stone Age") and the Neolithic ("new Stone Age").

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This picture shows how the modern horse has evolved over thousands of years.

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Skara Brae is a place in Scotland. If you visit it, you can see the remains of a Neolithic village made up of eight houses. The houses were sunk into the ground to keep them warmer and make them more stable. People lived there from around 3180-2500BCE.

Inside the houses you can see cupboards, dressers, storage boxes and beds - all made from stone! They have hearths where people would have made fires for heat and cooking. Archaeologists have found ancient fish bones and shells at the site, which tells us about what the people ate. Each house even had a simple toilet.

Visit the website below to learn more about Skara Brae and do some Stone Age activities. You can decorate some pottery or go searching for food and fuel to help you get through a storm. (Note that you have to do the activities in the Puffin web browser.)

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A BBC Scotland site exploring Skara Brae

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See if you can answer the 11 questions.

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Newgrange is in Ireland. It is a large, circular mound of earth. It has a stone passageway and rooms inside. Some of the stones have been decorated. It was built around 3200BC (over 5000 years ago) in the Neolithic period.

On the winter solstice (the shortest day of the year, in the middle of winter), the light from the rising sun shines directly into the main doorway. Because of this, archaeologists think the mound was built for religious purposes. However, we will probably never know its true meaning. Why do you think it was built?

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Mount Sandel is a place in Northern Ireland. It was the site of a Mesolithic ('Middle Stone Age') settlement. People lived there around 7000BC (that is, 9000 years ago). Click the link below to explore (don't miss the game where you can build your own Mesolithic house!):

http://www.mountsandel.com/mesolithic/index.asp

There is also evidence that people lived there in the Neolithic ('New Stone Age') period, from 4000-2500BC (around four to six thousand years ago). You can learn about their lives here:

http://www.mountsandel.com/neolithic/index.asp

Both of these communities were prehistoric. Remember that prehistory is the period before humans invented writing, so we have no written information about the people who lived at Mount Sandel. Instead, we have to dig up the ground to find out about them. You can find out more about this here:

http://www.mountsandel.com/digging_up_past/index.asp

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Learn how the weather changed after the ice age and how early humans adopted agriculture (farming).

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Human Prehistory 101 (Part 3 of 3): Agriculture Rocks Our World

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Learn about how early humans coped with the ice age, and how they got to North and South America.

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Human Prehistory 101 (Part 2 of 3): Weathering The Storm

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Another scientific word you might see is hominid. Hominids (also called 'great apes') are a "family" of species which today includes orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees and humans. These are the modern animals most closely related to us, because we all came from the same species - 14 million years ago!

There actually used to be many species of animal that looked similar to us. You can see some of them below, especially in the "Homo" group. However, the only one to survive was Homo sapiens - that's us!

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Homo sapiens (that is, humans that looked like us) actually evolved in Africa first. They then travelled all over the world, looking for new places to live. Watch this set of videos to learn more about humans leaving Africa.

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Human Prehistory 101 (Part 1 of 3): Out of (Eastern) Africa

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This video imagines the history of our planet as a single 24 hour day, starting at midnight. You can see how recently humans have appeared!

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Read this PowerPoint for an introduction to how homo sapiens evolved and lived. Learn about the daily lives of Early Man, such as how they got food and where they lived.

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D. What was life like for our early ancestors? In this section you can learn about early Stone Age life. You can see some of the famous tools and weapons left behind by Early Man. You can see some of their arts and crafts too.

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3.8 billion years of evolution in one 3:40 music video.

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Fatboy Slim - Right Here Right Now [OFFICIAL VIDEO]

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A Day in the Life of a 10 Year Old in Ancient Britain

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A Day in the Life of a 10 Year Old in Ancient Britain

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What would your life have been like if you were born 10,000 years ago? This was the end of the Palaeolithic period and the start of the Mesolithic.

At this point, the human species had been evolving for a couple of million years. Humans who looked like us had been around for about 190,000 years. They had learnt how to make and control fire a long time ago - at least 115,000 years ago, maybe much earlier.

However, they still hadn't come up with the idea of agriculture (staying in one place to grow food). They were still moving around according to the seasons to look for food. Life looked very different from how it does today.

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A Day in the Life Of A 10-Year-Old in Ancient Britain - Hands on History - BBC

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This timeline is divided into 'prehistory' and 'history'. All of the Stone Age falls inside the 'prehistory' section.

Prehistory is the period of time before humans invented writing. We have no written records of life at that time. We can only find out things about people's lives by digging up evidence from under the ground. We call the people who do this for a job archaeologists.

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Scientists have special names for the Stone Age. Because it lasted for around 3 million years, they divide it into three parts:

Palaeolithic
This means "old Stone Age".

Mesolithic
This means "middle Stone Age".

Neolithic
This means "new Stone Age".

During the Stone Age, humans did not know how to make items out of metal. However, eventually they learnt how to make a metal called bronze. This was a huge discovery! It brought about the end of the Stone Age and the start of the Bronze Age.

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Humans are primates. Other animals in this group include gorillas, lemurs and tarsiers. We look very different from these animals because, over thousands of years, we have evolved into a new species.

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B. We humans have evolved just the same as other animals. Learn more about the process of human evolution here.

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You can see that, over time, we learnt to walk on two legs. Our body shape changed and we lost most of the hair that covered us.

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C. Why were humans different from other animals? One big difference is that Early Man used tools to help them in their daily lives. Because these tools were made from stone, we call the period of Early Man the Stone Age.

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Now learn more about how natural selection works.