The whole year of East Asian Civilization, quarter by quarter: what your child is studying, what to ask about it at home, and quick review questions to check what stuck.
Ask, don't quizPick one card and ask one question at dinner. If your child can explain it to you, they know it.
Use the packetsEvery card links to the packet or study guide we used in class. They print well and work offline once opened.
Five minutes of reviewThe Quick review section gives instant feedback. Nothing is saved or graded, so it is safe to guess and learn.
Quarter 1 Units 1 and 2
Getting started
First weeks
How this class works
We set our class agreements and learned the tools we use all year: SPICE-T (Social, Political, Interactions, Cultural, Economic, Technology) for describing any civilization, and the difference between what a source SAYS and what we KNOW.
Ask at dinner
What does each letter of SPICE-T stand for?
What is the difference between what a source says and what we know?
Which part of SPICE-T is easiest for you? Which is hardest?
Planned cities with drains and baked bricks, about 2600–1900 B.C.E. We can see their writing, but nobody can read it, so much of how they lived is still a mystery.
Ask at dinner
Why can't historians tell us who ruled the Indus cities?
What does a city with drains tell you about the people who built it?
The Aryans left no writing. The Vedas were memorized for centuries before believers wrote them down. This period gave India the caste system and the ideas of dharma and karma, and the Buddha taught at its end.
Ask at dinner
How can a story survive for centuries without being written down?
What are the four groups of the caste system?
What problem do we have when only believers wrote a history?
The Zhou claimed the Mandate of Heaven. As their power weakened, the Warring States period began, and rival thinkers argued in writing: Confucianism, Daoism and Legalism.
Ask at dinner
What is the Mandate of Heaven, and how could a ruler lose it?
What is filial piety? Do we practise it at home?
If you were a ruler, which of the three schools of thought would you pick?
From the Jōmon hunter-gatherers to the keyhole-shaped Kofun tombs. Japan's first history, the Kojiki, was written in 712 C.E. in a borrowed Chinese script, and the greatest tombs cannot be opened.
Ask at dinner
Why is Japan's creation myth about islands?
What is a kami?
Why is it hard to study a tomb nobody is allowed to open?
Unit 2: Centralization and the Rise of Empires Unit 2 packet →
Unit 2
The Qin
The Qin united China with Legalism: one law, harsh punishments, and standardized writing, money, weights and even cart axles. Its story was written by its enemies, the Han.
Ask at dinner
Why would a ruler want everyone to use the same money and writing?
Is it fair to judge the Qin from a history its enemies wrote?
Built by conquest and run with officials, taxes and spies. After the bloody Kalinga war, Ashoka turned to dhamma and carved his ideas on rocks and pillars.
Ask at dinner
What changed Ashoka's mind after the Kalinga war?
Ashoka wrote his own story in stone. Can we trust it?
Compare the Qin and the Mauryans: how did each hold power?
The Yamato held power through marriage alliances and titles. The right to rule came by birth, from the sun goddess Amaterasu. The Taika Reforms of 645 rebuilt the government in China's image.
Ask at dinner
In China a ruler could lose the Mandate of Heaven. Why couldn't that happen in Japan?
The Han destroyed the Qin but kept its machine: a bureaucracy of officials, now with a Confucian face. The war with the nomadic Xiongnu opened the road west, the Silk Road.
Ask at dinner
What did the Han keep from the Qin, and what did they change?
What travelled along the Silk Road besides silk?
Why do we only have half the story of the Xiongnu?
Unit 3: Periods of Unification and Civil War, 300–1300 Unit 3 page →
Week 11
The Gupta Empire and the Period of Disunion
India's golden age under the Gupta: zero, the decimal system, Aryabhata and religious tolerance. At the same time, China split apart (220–589 C.E.), nomads ruled the north, and Buddhism spread fast along the Silk Road.
Ask at dinner
What did the Gupta give the world that we still use in math class?
The short-lived Sui reunified China in 589 and built the Grand Canal, joining the north to the rich rice lands of the south. It cost huge numbers of workers, and the dynasty fell soon after.
Ask at dinner
Why did China need a canal running north to south?
Was the Grand Canal worth what it cost the workers who built it?
How can a dynasty do something great and still fall quickly?
A golden age of trade, poetry and a cosmopolitan capital, Chang'an. We met Empress Wu, China's only woman emperor, and the An Lushan Rebellion that broke Tang power.
Japan built a new capital, Heian-kyō, copied from China's Chang'an, and a court culture of poetry and fine writing grew there. This week students also sat the Unit 3 exam.
Ask at dinner
What did Japan copy from Tang China, and what did it make its own?
Which question on the Unit 3 exam felt hardest?
What will you do differently to prepare next time?