Welcome to Egypt

We have been taking a trip into the world of Ancient Egypt.

We are following the reading suggestion in the pre-made classical curriculum and read through the excellent, short, story book in no time flat.

I am now officially in love with the Magic Tree House series, and I’ve only read the one book, Mummies in the Morning. It has two characters, Jack and Annie, who are brother and sister. They visit a treehouse in which there are many books on different subjects. Opening a book and wishing to be taken to the scene inside magically transports them and the treehouse there. In our case, to ancient Egypt.

The nice thing about this series of books is that they are accompanied by a non-fiction book on the same topic, Mummies and Pyramids. Using the same characters, we are able to learn a range of bite-sized snippets of information about Egypt and it’s culture in a non-fiction form. Both books have some drawings and photographs, so that helps with keeping up the interest and aids in understanding.

I have also been directed to Activity Village’s Ancient Egypt theme section where we printed off many, many copies of images for colouring in. We revisited the Creation Myth book that we had been using for earlier reading, and read about Ra and Apophis.

We have been reading about making mummies, sarcophagi, the pyramids, the Black Land and the Red Land, the Sphinx and the Nile. So far it seems to be interesting enough to have Miss Oh Waily ask me to read about Egypt to her while she is having her lunch.

Here are some of the things she has done so far.

Using the creation myth book from previous entries, we read about Ra and Apophis with Miss Oh Waily doing a drawing of them fighting it out. Then I printed a few different colouring-in sheets for her to do (and her brother had to have some too). Can you tell that she is a bit in love with the gold and silver Artline pens? Perfect for those gilded and bright masks and sarcophagi.

Then I cut out (they were a bit fiddly) the shape of a pyramid and let her colour it in. Together we used sellotape to make the final 3D item. I’m not sure what the Pharoahs would have thought of the aesthetics, but hey a five year old had fun designing it.

And finally, we collaborated on creating a cartouche. Miss Oh helped a bit with the rolling out of the base and the making of the sausage that created the edge. Then once it was dry* she set to it with her paints. I’m contemplating whether to create the hieroglyphics to spell out her name and seeing if she wants to add them to it later. I’ll see how it goes.

And that has been our first foray into the world of ancient Egypt. No doubt we will now move on for a while, but I hope to come back for a visit soon.

SOME WEBSITES ABOUT ANCIENT EGYPT