In Lessons 22-24 of our history text (The Mystery of History, Volume I), we discussed ancient Egypt in more depth, with the study of Amenhotep IV, Nefertiti, King Tutankhamen, and Ramses.
Learning about this culture is so much fun! And these Usborne sticker books are even more fun! (Maggie LOVES them!) Out of their Sticker Dressing: Long Ago book, we completed the "Ancient Egypt" pages (2-3).
Then, using the suggestion in the text, we made a cartouche bookmark of her name with the hieroglyphics alphabetized in the Appendix.
She is very proud of it!
We also decided to put together our National Geographic Archaeological Sculpting Kit (which I scored at Big Lots for only $4).
After we softened the clay in the kit, we pushed it into the molds provided. Then we let it dry for a few days before removing them.
Once they were dry, Maggie got to work painting them!
And then we set up the scene from the kit! Neat!
She was tickled that one of the scenery pieces was a likeness of King Ramses II (the Great), who we learned about in Lesson 24 of our text. (This is one of the figures at his temple in Abu Simbel.)
And she was probably most excited about using this with these lessons -- the "Lift the Lid on Mummies" kit that we picked up at the Michael C. Carlos Museum when we visited a few weeks ago. It has a plastic body inside, complete with plastic organs, that you can mummify. (We did this previously with our Kermit toy. You can see the process at http://homeschoolingmom2mags.blogspot.com/2014/10/early-egypt.html.)
Here, Maggie is removing the organs ...
... and placing them in the little canopic jars in the kit.
Our four canopic jars held our mummy's lungs, stomach, liver, and intestines. (The early Egyptians discarded of the brain and actually thought all the thinking was done with the heart.)
Our mummy was then ready to be wrapped!
The kit had sticker amulets to add to the wrappings.
Finally, when the wrapping was done, we added a funeral mask.
We also put together the cat mummy in the kit.
All of these were placed back in the box ("the tomb") and closed up ...
... with a clear message to potential tomb robbers! (She had a lot of fun with this!)
Here she is posing with her homemade tomb, and her gift shop tomb.
Next was something I really enjoyed! At the suggestion of the text, we traced the outline of her body, "mummified," on paper, and decorated the tracing to make her sarcophagus!
The inner line was her body's tracing. The outer line is the line we made for her coffin.
We outlined the outer line in marker and got right to work decorating it!
We also used our hieroglyphics stencils again that we used in the http://homeschoolingmom2mags.blogspot.com/2014/10/early-egypt.html post.
Looking good, Mags!
After our coloring was done, we added gemstones!
Once it was dry, we cut it out and hung it on the door of our classroom! We were both so tickled with the finished product!
Then, I sent her on a treasure hunt! First, I pulled together some beads and chocolate coins.
I placed these in a jar and hid the jar in the house.
I then told her she was Howard Carter (the archaeologist who found Tutankhamen's untouched tomb in 1922) and that the house was the Egyptian desert. She was on the search for treasure! It didn't take her long to find it.
For lunch, we ate like the ancient Egyptians. We had pomegranate ...
... dates, chickpeas, figs, cheese, wheat bread, honey, and "wine" (grape juice). I served it all on a gold platter (one of my gold Christmas chargers).
She liked everything but the dates.
For our final project for the week, we used one of the maps in The Usborne Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt ...
... (the map) ...
... to construct an edible map with cake! First, I made a yellow sheet cake. Once it was cool, we mixed a little white frosting with blue food coloring to use for the Nile River and the Mediterranean Sea, and cracked open this seasonal maple brown sugar frosting to serve as the sand of the Egyptian desert.
This is how our cake looked once the frosting was placed!
Next, Maggie added some little plastic figures from our Safari Ltd. Ancient Egypt Toob (I love those things!) to the map so it was geographically correct. Here is the Sphinx, in front of the pyramids of Giza. (We also added some crushed up graham crackers to enhance our sand.)
We placed Tutankhamen's funeral mask in the Valley of the Kings and Nefertiti's bust in Amarna where her husband, Amenhotep IV, moved the capital of Egypt during his reign.
It turned out great! We'll be digging into it tonight!
We love MOH!