Educational activities
Who says that academics don’t like having fun and sharing their knowledge with schoolchildren?
The CSPS team combine our love for ancient history and archaeology with our love for fun learning.
We have set up a series of educational packages and activities to engage schoolchildren of all ages with ancient history and archaeology with a particular focus on the Spartans and southern Greece!
Dr Chrysanthi Gallou (Director of CSPS) speaking to a group of Greek school children
The Centre works closely with colleagues from the University of Nottingham's Widening Participation and Outreach team and IntoUniversity to deliver the Nottingham-based activities, and runs projects in Greek schools too in collaboration with local archaeological units. Our educational resources and activities leaflets are available in both English and Greek.
Meet the Sparta Team
Our Sparta Team Leader
Dr Chrysanthi Gallou
Chrysanthi teaches Greek archaeology at the university. She enjoys designing all kinds of educational activities and resources, and she is a great fan of the Playmobil ancient gods and goddesses figures. She’ll even let you play with them!
Greek-themed Playmobil figures
Our Sparta Learning Champions
Paz Ramirez Valiente
Paz is a doctoral students and she is fond of prehistoric figurines (how cool is that?)! She will tell you all about Spartan women and girls (Girl Power!) and she loves showing you how to make clay replicas of ancient things (plus she always smiles)!
Matt Thompson
Matt is a doctoral student. He is obsessed with the monuments that the ancient Spartans were setting up to celebrate their victories and to commemorate their battles! He really enjoys telling the story of Spartan kids stealing cheese from the altar of Artemis Orthia (what a strange story indeed!).
Our Greek children’s author
Sarantos Minopetros
Sarantos is currently working on two family books – one about our investigations at the prehistoric submerged town and one about purple. He is fond of anything related to the sea – from pirates and shipwrecks to ancient submerged sites (Pavlopetri is his favourite sunken town)! Did you know he is a real Spartan too?
Our Greek philologist
Maro Charami
Maro is helping us with the editing of our Greek family books and she is a great storyteller!
Our Spartanteers (=Sparta+volunteers!)
This year a lovely group of UoN undergraduate students have joined the Sparta Team. Alexia, Kate and Molly are fond of the Playmobil figures and they’ve had great fun setting the figures up and taking the super wonderful photos shown in our website. Cerys and Rachel got super creative and have produced educational packages on prehistoric (Mycenaean) perfumed oils!
Let us introduce you to our fabulous Spartanteers:
Alexia Burrows Charalambidou
Alexia studies BA Classical Civilisation.
Kate Honeker
Kate studies BA Archaeology.
Cerys Powell
Cerys studies BA Archaeology.
Molly Preston
Molly studies BA Archaeology.
Rachel Rolph
Rachel studies BA Archaeology.
Example recent outreach event
Children’s workshop: Ancient Greece and the Spartans
Were the Spartans all fierce warriors? Or more like you and I? School students found out more about this ancient civilisation with our experts on Ancient Greece. They took part in practical activities exploring the lives of Spartans. They discussed stories about Sparta’s military training, cult practices and everyday life activities to decide whether the reputation of Spartans as mere ‘war machines’ was to be believed.
Current projects
Click below to explore some of our many current projects, and get in touch with Dr Chrysanthi Gallou if your school is interested in getting involved: