A Mummifying Lesson

This week we Mummified a baby doll.

Studying Ancient Egypt in such depth is actually an addendum to my "planned" curriculum but school sometimes works that way and I think it's just fine to let interests and the Spirit guide our learning.

A few weeks ago we hit Ancient Egypt in The Story of the World.  We then pulled out academic picture books and I ordered a few more from the library system.

Our favorite so far is Ms. Frizzle's Adventures: Ancient Egypt by Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen.

 It is done in typical "Magic School Bus" fashion but without the class and without the bus.  It's an amazingly educational, yet fun book.  My sons spend much time just looking through it.

Today we re-enacted a few pages from this book as we created a Mummy.  After much thought, a bald baby doll since many in Ancient Egypt shaved their heads.

We read our Ms. Frizzle book and studied the Mummy making process.

We then colored our sarcophagus which we would later pretend was our mummy mask.  I used the "M" card from Veritas Press' Phonics Museum and the coloring sheets that went with it.

 Even the Wee Girl helped by stealing all the pencils, throwing them onto the table and then putting them back in.  She DID actually color a few scribbles on her mask..... until she crumpled it and took it to the wood stove where she whined as if asking me to start a fire.  :)

 The boys then pretended to take the stomach, lungs, intestines and liver (see blocks! lol) and place them in the canopic jars.  (Sorry the picture is sideways, I think it's not TOO disorienting.)

 Square peg, round hole...but we managed to get those organs in their respective jars.  The Ms. Frizzle book gave great instructions to help us get it right.

 Then the process was to pack the body with salt.  I wasn't in the mood to waste that much salt, nor clean out baby doll afterwards so we used our sense of taste and tried the stuff out.  I'm not sure they've ever eaten salt that wasn't sprinkled on food.  If you can't tell by the picture: Otto did not like it, Abram said it was yummy and wanted the whole jar!  :)

 We then pretended to pack the body and soak the baby doll in the salt (Mason Jar).

 

 Then it was time to remove the salt and place the amulets among the linen (aka: super cheap toilet paper) wrappings.  Between Ms Frizzle and a picture I had printed off we IMAGINED that our sparkely marbels were Ankh's, Scarab's and Eye of Horous Amulets.

 THEN.............  you can see what BOYS do when wrapping a baby doll up as a mummy.  (Insert rolling eye emoticon here.)  :)

Abram had to inspect the wrapping.

Then it was time to place the Mummy Mask over the mummy's head (errr, over the entire baby!). . . . . . .

pretend it was in a mummy case and then place the mummy case into the stone tomb box.

With the canopic jars.

We then sealed the box and in a sort of backward move.... chose what kind of pyramid to build.

And built a mighty fine pyramid which included worshiping Dog-Sphinx to guard it from Wee Girl vandals.

Life is fun.  Just imagine the amazing things I could accomplish if I thought of such things more than 24 hours in advance!  :)

BTW:  While searching for canopic jar and amulet images I found several really nice links.  Aren't you lucky that I copied them as I found them right here for YOU!  :)  So very nice, I am!  :)

Ancient Eqypt for Kids.
Lesson plans including a really cool paper mache Canopic Jar project.
Activity Village - coloring pages.  :)
The British Museum - Ancient Egypt display
History for Kids - Great information.

Again, I'm sure there are plenty more out there if one has time to google or swagbuck search.  I just hit upon these earlier and thought I would share them.  I'm still in search of that "PERFECT" and "FREE" "Young Kid Friendly" Lapbook.

If you have info on Ancient Egypt that you would like to share I'd love to see it and so would my followers.  Please share.  :)