We started our homeschool year studying early civilizations.
When we got to Egypt, we slowed right down. Why? Because the kids were fully engaged. There was much interest on pyramid construction and mummy preparations. And though I was willing to mummify an apple (every good homeschooler mummifies chickens, right?) We own actual chickens in an actual coop and no one would be game for this activity).
Homemade archaeological digs.
But one must have an archeological dig if one is having an Egyptian party. As a gardener, I always have some terracotta pieces lying around. On these, I drew with permanent marker a few alphabetic hieroglyphs. They revealed a secret message: KOOKIES. (I couldn’t find a hieroglyphic C).
Cookie dough maps of Egypt, the Nile, and Giza.
So after the dig, we headed into the house to shape our oatmeal cookie dough into maps of Egypt, using blue icing and licorice to show the Nile river valley. Oh, and for those 35 pyramids: juice based gummy candies, but only on the west side of the Nile, cause that’s where they are. Zach built Giza with three gummies, cause it’s got to be to scale right?
Reading, writing, podcast, and video: hit all the learning modalities.
These activities happened after we listened to a podcast on an Egyptian God, watched a video on Tutankhamen and drew pictures of him, compliments to Pinterest. I also had a beautiful printable for the head of Tutankhamen that the kids coloured while I read from Story of the World and Usborne’s Time Traveler. We found a hieroglyphic legend from an Egyptology book and drew our own cartouches (breastplate insignias with our names on them…which also made the kids more familiar with the hieroglyphs when we did our archaeological dig).
Walk and eat like an Egyptian.
And one must not, cannot have an Egyptian party, if one has ever danced a sock hop in the 80s, the 1980s that is…so we “Walked like an Egyptian” and when we didn’t quite have the energy to carry off subsequent dances to other Egyptian raps (yes, there are now Egyptian rap songs, not from Egypt, might I add…we listened to modern Egyptian music too)…we reenergized with a plate of grapes, figs, feta, almonds and pistachios, cucumbers and honey.
So much fun at our Egyptian partay!
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