Heiroglyphs

We have been having fun making our own heiroglyphic stamps using some old wooden playing blocks I picked up at a garage sale and some sticking back foam sheets. I introduced Hieroglyphs to the boys via the BBC documentary entitled Discoverying Egypt. Then we read through the book Heiroglyhs which comes with a handy dandy heiroglyph stencil which made our stamp making sucessful. If you have a minute take a look at our slide show of the project.

These are the tools we used to make our stamps.

Thanks for dropping by.

Every Day Life In Ancient Egypt Pocket

Our unit on every day life in Ancient Egypt though short was a lot of fun. I read aloud from:

Boy of the Pyramids, and Our Little Egyptian Cousin while they colored the following every day images and wrote about some of the everday events on the handwriting papers.

The every day things make a nice colorful pocket.

For this unit I ordered Ellen McHenry's Mapping the World with Art curriculum instead of doing a map drill. The map drawing curriculum includes maps for the whole globe and done in such a simple straight forward way the boys used only a pencil and eraser and a pen to make these  wonderful maps of egypt.

The boys also made these colorful costumes and dressed up as egyptians.

Max the greatest!

Zak and TJ the dancing egyptian boys.

Making an Egyptian Temple

Island Temple at Philea by David Roberts

Building an egyptian temple out of paper is not as easy as we thought, even with our pre-planned punch out and glue together model. We found that gluing together the many paper pieces didn't work so well and so we opted for clear tape instead. Though it makes the end result look a bit tacky it was more within our range and abilities so we went with it. Building this temple was a big hit with the boys who were so deltighted to see the temple come alive as we completed first the pylons, the obelisks and flags and then on another day the courtyard.

Each day we added another section.

After the hopstyle hall we constructed the sanctuary and the priests house

And that completes our temple building project!

Just so you know....all the pictures for this post were taken by Max (except this one). He is becoming quite a good photographer.

Pyramids and Their Mummies

We spent the month of February looking at pyramids and mummies. I had these books on hand to use and all of them were fabulous. Each one gave the boys repeated info regarding the pyramids but from different angles thus making a more complete picture of the mystery of the pyramids.

• Pyramid by David Macaulay (this book showed us how the pyarmids may have been built)
• Fast Forward Pyramid (my boys favorite book because it has sort of a where's waldo aspect. On each page, which is richly illustrated, you get to look for a fat man, a monkey and a vulture. It takes you through the ages looking at the Giza pyramids as time passes.)
• The Great Pyramid by Elizabeth Mann (the story of pyramids how they came about, what they mean, and the burial process of the ancient Egyptians)
• Who Built the Pyramids? An Usborne book with internet links (an overview of the egyptians)
• Secrets of the Sphinx by James Cross Giblin (beautiful illustrations and lots of great info on pyramids as well as the sphinx)
• The Great Wonder by Annabelle Howard (a fun story about a modern boy who imagines he is present when the pyramids are built)
• Mummies Made in Egypt by Aliki (wonderfully inllustrated, with clear descritpions of the process and the meaning of mummification.)

We began our study by drawing a pryamid using Ralph Masiello's Ancient Egyptian Drawing Book and then mounting it onto yet another pocket. It looks like a simple drawing but the boys found that drawing jaggedy lines was not easy. After a few false starts we  finally got some great results. Don't they look old and crumbly? You may wonder why all our pyramids are red with gold cap stones....well in the Fast Forward Pyramid book (which we read first) is says that that is what the Ancient Egytians did. Later in Pyramid we learned many were also left white. But the capstone usually was gold.

Here are a few things we have in our pockets.

This little fold up book is from Evan Moor's Ancient Egypt History Pockets.

There are five different pages describing the general steps of how the pryamids were built.

Cover for the Great Giza Pyramid booklet. Also from Evan Moor's History Pockets.

Inside is a page detailing the passages inside the pyramid structure.

This another view of the tomb from the top, detaling what goes inside of the burial chambers. Also from Evan Moor.

The Great Sphinx Booklet aslo from Evan Moor.

This book contains information about the pryamids and the sphinx. I found the info on the internet somewhere and now I ahve lost it. I simply printed off the pages and bound the pages together by stapling the brown cover with the pages in between.

The copywork booklet below is bound with my pro-click binder. The cover art can be found here.

The copywork is from this source. It covers all the steps to mummify a corpse. I chopped off the extra paper around the edges to make the book smaller to fit in the pocket.

With these FREE montesorri cards of the seven wonders of the ancient world we played concentration. It was fun to note that both the light house at Alexandria and the pyramids at Giza are one of the seven wonders. The pictures in the orginal are all in color. I am still using a B&W printer though.

We did both 2D and 3D projects, but these two pyramids  from an e-book called The Pyramids of Egypt by Cross Eyed Curriculum and they just may cross over the 3-D/2-D line.  What I loved most about them is that they are joined together by rubber bands. So we can take them apart and slip them into our pockets once we are done with them. This was truely a delightful way to report on just about any pyramid you happen to be studying. The creative possiblities of these 3-D structures is inspiring. We all wanted to make more and more and more of them and just fill up the room with pyramids.

Here is a second look at a different angle.

Sugar cube pyramids.

Lastly, we made these punch out and glue together (we used clear tape. It works much better and far less messy) sarcophoguses and then paper mache'd a cheap action figure for the mummy.

Mummies Made by Us

For the past month of so we have been investigating how the Egyptians made the pyramids and why they mummified ther dead. To get our minds around this concept we got our hands involved. The following is a short post documenting the fun we had making a paper mache' mummy. The first step was to find a cheap "doll" to wrap. the doll had to fit into the paper sarcophoguses we had already made.

I found a $1.25 orange action figure that was just the right size if we popped off his cheaply made arms. The boys loved this! Then we set up to cover them with strips of paper. I had just done a printing of their grammar books for next year so these strips of paper were throw aways. The flour costs little to nothing as well as the water. So it was an inexpensive adventure at $3.75 in total.

Next after a short demo, the boys were off and paper mache'ing

A close up of their fine workmanship.

The finished product.

The little silver gun came with the action figure. The sarcophoguses we purchased from Dover.

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

What did the Pharaohs wear on their heads?

 We have begun a new pocket for the Kings and Queens of Ancient Egypt and we are filling it up rapidly.

Red Crown book

The first thing we did was to look at all of the different crowns and headderesses the Pharaohs wore and what they symbolized. To do this I created books for each one. You can download the PDF for these crown books HERE and create your own.

The crown books contain a cover to decorate and a page for writing and a back cover which is plain.

Zak's Double crown book

Max's White Crown book

T.J.'s war crown book

(nemes crown book? our picture is missing)

Making one of the these books took us about 1 hour. So, while they were coloring and cutting and copying, I read to them from The Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt by Elizabeth  Payne.

Now all the books are tucked nicely away into the Kings and Queens pocket. How to make these pockets HERE.

 But wait there is yet more...This next book is also included in the Crowns book PDF.

Max's Crook and Flail book.

The crook is one of the symbol s the pharaoh is seen with often in reliefs and paintings. It symbolized the role the Pharaoh plays as a shepherd to his people. The Flail is the symbol of power and used against the enemies of Egypt to bring them into submission. Learning this was very enriching, it opened our eye to see how each of the pharaohs were either better with the crook or better with the flail or good at both sides of leadership.

Now, because boys are interested in more active things than writing and coloring, I have interjected many different games and hands on projects in between making these lovely crown books. This was successful in keeping them moving at a nicer pace through our study of Egypt. A pace that all enjoyed. One of these activites is a game called The Egyptians. It is a bit pricey but well worth the money. My dh husband introduced the game to the boys and changed the rules slightly. Instead of the goal of the game to become the conquering pharaoh he set the game up so that the one who was the best shepherd to his people wins. I love it! and so did the boys. We also played Go Fish for Ancient Egypt.

Max's nemes crown

Over at First Pallette I found some fun printables for making egyptian headresses and arm bands, necklaces etc. The boys plan to make all of them, this nemes crown being the first of their collections. They also want me sew a white Egyptain skirt for each of them. Luckily for me, a friend of mine happened to be moving and gave away a lot of fabric. Max scored a wonderful piece of wite shimmery fabric that will make three egyptian skirts easily! We are all thrilled!

Zak's nemes crown

T.J.'s nemes crown

They painted masks of Pharoah. More on that over HERE.

T.J.'s  latest map drill

They did some very cool looking maps with our new water colors we picked up in Sri lanka.

Max's latest map drill

And that wraps up our lastest investigation into Ancient Egypt. Soon more about the pharoahs and queens.