Ancient Egyptian Kings and Queens Pockets

Whew! We are finally finished with our overview of the rulers of ancient Egypt. We read through The Pharoahs of Ancient Egypt to get a nice narrative picture of the happenings of these ancient rulers. We learned who reigned when and some of the stories that surrounded these god rulers. We read about Pepi and Menes who ruled early on and then about Hatshepsut when she took over the seat of power and called herself pharaoh and a dressed like a man. Then we read about the pharoahs who conquered like Thutmose the third and Rameses the second. Finally we learned about the greek and roman conquerors and queen Cleopatra. When we read about each ruler from our Imagining Egypt book I created a bio book to go along with it. The bio book gives the boys a way to narrate verbally and then I write down what they narrate. They then copy the written into the bio book. (copywork)

The bio books as we have begun to call them, slip into our Pharoahs and Queens pockets in the picture above. These bio books are of the pharaohs. Each bio book has a cover and a page for writing in, and a back cover. I prepared each bio book so while I read about the pharaoh the boys could be coloring and cutting, writing, and putting the books together. You can find the bio books here.

This is the bio book we did for the Narmer Palette (Menes). He was the Phaoraoh they called the Socrpion. He united lower and upper Egypt into a united land and invented the double crown. This bio book is different than the rest for I wanted the boys to understand what the pictures on the palette meant. Take a look inside...

These are the queens of ancient Egypt bio books the boys have done. They can be found here. 

You may notice the help wanted poster. That was one of the activities we gleaned from the ancient egypt pockets by Evan Moore. As well there is a small mailer envelope in the picture. It contains the soldiers and photos of the battle of kadesh which we re-enacted with paper soldiers, and a very simple hand drawn map. See one of the pictures the boys took of thier battle of Kadesh re-enactment below. 

 These are the Hittite soldiers 'hiddden' behind the city of Kadesh. They send out a spy to act as a wounded man struggling to gain his freedom from them. He lies and says he was beaten by the Hittites and they have fled back to another city miles away. So Rameses sets up camp on the opposite side of Kadesh. His troops amount to himself and a few guards. They await the arrival of the three other squadrons fo soldiers coming from the south, when the Hittites who had been hidden attack and Rameses is fighting 2,500 men all alone. He barely makes it out alive. It is a very cool story. Anyway the boys loved it!

They loved playing this too!

 Other books we read along the way include:

The Cultural Atlas for Young People: Ancient Egypt (my favorite resource to date)

Eyewitness Books Ancient Egypt (great photos of articfacts)

The Usborne Encyclopedia of the Ancient World (This book includes sections for Greece and Rome)

Cleopatra by Diane Stanley