All About Egypt

We have a budding Egyptologist in our midst!

After starting The Story of the World-The Ancients it's all pyramids, pharaohs and mummies in our household.

L got a subscription to Little Passports for her birthday and the first country just happened to be Egypt.  L was beside herself with excitement.  It came with this tiny pyramid to excavate.  After a very long time trying to get out the treasure she finally unearthed a small bust of King Tut!

The Little Passports kit also came with a map and some cute activities.

We talked about how the ancient Egyptians wrote using hieroglyphics and invented papyrus paper.  We had a great time writing out messages to each other in hieroglyphics and trying to decode them.

The Story of the World also talks about cuneiform writing on clay tablets.  L wrote out a message into air drying clay.  

This was such an easy yet effective project.  Using toilet paper rolls and taping the tops together L was able to make some cat mummies.  She used gold paint and sharpies.  They are so cute!

I have to take a moment here to say how wonderful our library is.  L has read so many books on ancient Egypt she is somewhat of an expert.

One of her books had projects and games that children would have played in ancient Egypt.  One of the games was called senet and there were instructions on how to make up one to play.  L was soooo excited to make this.  We used an old chocolate box for the board and L made up sticks with Egyptian designs on them for the counting.  This is such a cool method instead of using dice.  You just throw the sticks and which ever ones land with the design up is the number you move your piece.  Such a simple concept but we had fun playing several games.

The biggest highlight of our Egypt study was our Egyptian family meal.  L read up on how the Egyptians ate on the floor and used only their hands and bowl of water for washing them.  We had bread, olives, feta cheese, falafels, cucumber, dates and several other things on a mat in our living room while listening to Egyptian music.  This was so much fun as everyone in the family dressed up.  

We made headbands for the kids with tin foil asps on them and I made up L's eyes with dark make up.  She was over the moon.  We also made collars earlier in the day that the kids coloured.

 Here is L's scrapbook that she created with facts and info on Egypt. If you look closely you can see some pics of our dinner.

Last thing.  I finally found some shrinky dink paper for L to made flags.  I've seen this idea all over Pintrest and L so badly wanted to do it.  She will make up a flag for all of our Little Passport countries to start.

Ancient Egypt was a blast!