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6th grade · Social Studies · Unit 3 of 12

Where Civilizations Grew

Rivers, mountains and seas

What your child practices

How geography shaped Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley and Shang China along their rivers, plus Greece, Rome and the Maya. Includes a reading passage about the Nile flood.

Arizona Academic Standards learning standard: 6.G3.2; 6.G2.1 · how rivers, land and climate shaped the first civilizations

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Early civilizations grew by rivers: Mesopotamia (Tigris and Euphrates, today's Iraq), Egypt (Nile), India (Indus), China (Yellow River).
  2. Landforms shaped them: mountains and seas split Greece into city-states; mountains and deserts kept China apart.
  3. The Mediterranean Sea made trade and travel easy.

Example: Why did ancient Greece form many city-states instead of one kingdom? Look at Greece's land. Mountains and seas split it into small regions. Answer: Mountains and seas divided the land.

Where Civilizations Grew in Arizona

In the Arizona Academic Standards, this is unit 3 of 12 in 6th grade Social Studies, after First Farmers and before Mesopotamia & Egypt.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: Arizona Department of Education

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    Along which river valley did early Chinese civilization (the Shang dynasty) grow?

    🏞️early Chinese civilization (the Shang dynasty)
    • the Indus River
    • the Tigris and Euphrates rivers
    • the Huang He (Yellow River)
    • the Nile River

  2. Question 2

    Which civilization is each feature from? Sort them.

    Sort into: 🌴 Mesopotamia · 🐉 Ancient China (Shang) · 🐊 Ancient Egypt

    • ⚖️Hammurabi's law code
    • 🧵silk woven from silkworm thread
    • 👁️hieroglyphs carved on temple walls
    • 👑pharaohs who ruled as god-kings
    • 🦴oracle bones with early Chinese writing
    • 🏙️Sumerian city-states like Ur

  3. Question 3

    How did the deserts on each side of the Nile help Ancient Egypt?

    🏜️
    • They made it hard for invaders to reach Egypt
    • They were full of forests for timber
    • They supplied fresh drinking water
    • They provided rich farmland

  4. Question 4

    Why is the Huang He called the Yellow River?

    • It carries huge amounts of yellow-brown silt
    • Its banks are covered in yellow flowers
    • The Sun reflects off it at sunset
    • It was painted for festivals

  5. Question 5

    Why did Egyptians call their land Kemet, 'the black land'?

    The Gift of the Nile

    Egypt gets very little rain, yet thousands of years ago it fed a large population. The reason was the Nile River. The Greek historian Herodotus called Egypt 'the gift of the Nile.'

    Every summer, heavy rains fell far to the south in the highlands of Ethiopia. The water flowed north, and the Nile rose until it spilled over its banks. When the flood went down in autumn, it left a layer of dark, rich silt on the fields. Egyptians called their land Kemet, 'the black land,' after this soil, and the desert beyond it Deshret, 'the red land.'

    Farmers planted wheat and barley in the damp silt and harvested them in spring. Because the flood came at about the same time each year, Egyptians kept a calendar of 365 days. Officials measured the river's height with stone gauges called nilometers to predict the harvest and decide how much tax to collect.

    • Because of smoke from cooking fires
    • Because the desert sand was black
    • Because of the dark, rich silt left by the flood
    • Because the nights were very dark

  6. Question 6

    Ancient Rome grew up on hills beside which river?

    🏛️
    • the Tiber
    • the Indus
    • the Nile
    • the Huang He

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