Some links re ancient Mexico...

The Mesoamerican Ballgame - A very cool site, well-done, scholarly and full of primary sources, with many interesting details. Younger students would need guidance; in order to explore this site a student would need good reading ability, self-direction, and the skill to organize the information s/he reads. Includes a brief video of players re-enacting the game on an ancient court.

Ballgame - Not nearly as good, and containing style/grammar errors - but includes more details about the rules and scoring than are included in the site above.

That link is part of this site:
Mayan Kids
The site is extensive, although style/grammar errors and possible factual deficiencies limit its usefulness. It has sections for people, places, beliefs, glossary, and games. The people section alone has the following subsections: Foods | Bug tacos | Food bites | Chewing gum | Ball game | Arts | Music | Dance | Beauty | Hairless Dogs | Textiles | Stone Tree | Calendars | Math | Writing | Marriage | Jade | Aztecs | Sailing | Ceramics | Books.


Ancient Mexico... limited and inconsistent. Students should be directed to use specific pages; probably the documents section is most useful, including this:

Letter from Cortés to King Charles V of Spain, 1520 - fascinating. He describes Tenochtitlán in vivid terms; when he compares things in the Aztec city to things in Spain, the Spanish side is usually smaller or lesser. One surprise:

...[T]he principal [idols], in which the people have greatest faith and confidence, I precipitated from their pedestals, and cast them down the steps of the temple, purifying the chapels in which they had stood, as they were all polluted with human blood.... In the place of these I put images of Our Lady and the Saints, which excited not a little feeling in Moctezuma and the inhabitants, who at first remonstrated....

I said everything to them I could to divert them from their idolatries, and draw them to a knowledge of God our Lord. Moctezuma replied, the others assenting to what he said, that they had already informed me they were not the aborigines of the country, but that their ancestors had emigrated to it many years ago; and they fully believed that after so long an absence from their native land, they might have fallen into some errors; that I having more recently arrived must know better than themselves what they ought to believe; and that if I would instruct them in these matters, and make them understand the true faith, they would follow my directions, as being for the best.

This is not helping me get my lesson plans written... more another time.