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.

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.

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.

I Got Some Egypt In My Pocket

The idea of a pocket is simply charming. You can make pockets in so many different ways, in so many sizes and with so many different materials. Then there is the fascinating thought of what to put into it, and what to take out of it. I love pockets!

So, this year when I wasn't sure how to organize our study of Ancient Egypt and stumbled upon Evan Moor History pockets, I was intrigued. The pocket idea sounded interesting. It had possibilities I had not thought about. To get an idea of what history pockets are I purchase the history pocket for Egypt e-book by Evan Moor from Currclick and took a look. They showed how to make the pockets and provided activities and information to put into the pockets. I liked the way the activities resembled mini books and notebooking pages we had used before. Looking at their ideas made my mind began to see even more possibilities. So from their idea we have jumped into a fun and 'not sure how it will turn out' project that will take us the whole year to put together. But we are all tickled with the new creativity it spawns in us all.

The first problem I had to solve was, what to make the pockets out of. I wanted them to be durable and look somewhat like papyrus. I also wanted the materials to be inexpensive because we plan to do nine pockets during the year. Times that by three, nine for each boy and you end up making 27 pockets. Rice paper can get a bit spending working at that quantity. Then I remembered a post Jimmie wrote last year about Sprite's sixth grade lapbook of Egypt. She had used a large brown mail envelope. That was it! So I went to work to design some pockets out of  brown mailers I had on hand here in my house.

The pocket idea from Cover to Cover.

The next problem to solve was how to make the pockets. The Ancient Egypt history pockets e-book I purchased had an idea which used one piece of construction paper, but I felt our pockets needed to be a bit larger. So I went to my shelf and pulled down a book called Cover to Cover. It is all about how to make  handmade books. In this book I found a wonderful pattern and directions for the pockets. The best thing was that I only had to throw away one 1 inch strip of my mailer and was able to use all the rest of it. I love that! The tutorial for making the pockets can be found here.

The Book idea from Cover to Cover.

Well now, looking at Cover to Cover wet my appetite for more creativity. In the pages of ideas for making books I found a style of handmade book that would lend itself easily to binding up our pockets once they were all complete. This method allows for the book to be as thick or as thin as we want. The cover can be hand crafted by the boys and then the pockets can be stitched together as if they were each a signature (a signature is a grouping pages). The cover once created can be stitched on at that time as well.

The boys were particularly interested in this stitched book idea because they are learning to hand sew on felt this year. It is a skill they chose to learn so I have been helping them with simple sewing projects. To think of sewing up a book captured their imagination and gave then a goal they wanted to work for. I may end up doing most of the sewing but it will be good for them to see how it is done.

Our idea for making the cover is simple. I have some Egyptian origami paper that the boys can hodgepodge onto a thick piece of cardboard. It will most likely be the thick cardboard from the back of our drawing paper pads. The boys will create a title to paste over that and we will see what happens then.

So our plan is to continue making pockets out of mailers, filling them with oversized mini books, maps, pictures, and other things we make or do as we learn more about Ancient Egypt.  Our first pocket, Introduction to Ancient Egypt,  is complete. We are currently working on The Kings and Queens of Egypt pocket.

Fronts of the pockets.

What's on the inside.

The items in this pocket that I added are:

The Archeology Tools mini book

'My Photos' photo album

The Cat of Bubastes mini book report booklet

One pocket down and eight more pockets to go!