Ancient Egypt Unit cont.

Ancient Egypt for Kids- This is a great site. I let the kids pick and choose some topics and they discovered a several interesting things. Like this: an online version of an ancient game called Senet and Egyptian Math- a game that has students explore place value and other math functions using the Egyptian symbols.

We read about the Great Sphinx, took a tour of the Great Pyramid at Giza, and tried to build our own virtual pyramid (which we never successfully accomplished- those Egyptians knew what they were doing.)

The kids had a great deal of reading today in their library books about Ancient Egyptian life. We also did some experiments with a science kit that talked about friction and movement similar to the method the Egyptians used to move the stones. I scored this set with all the pieces intact at a thrift store last weekend for 5o cents. WOOHOO!

I had planned on doing a sugar cube pyramid but could not find the sugar cubes. Several things I planned this week fell through so I am filling in the gap with other activities and thankful that I have the freedom to do that.

Tomorrow we finish up Ancient Egypt, it's been fun!

Warning: Personal Medical Info to follow

I just woke up from crashing out on the couch. I went to my annual exam yesterday to come home with antibiotics for a UTI. This is some crazy medicine. I have never seen a May Cause Drowsiness-Be careful driving or operating dangerous machinery warning on antibiotics. Here are some of the common side effects: chills, cough, dizziness, drowsiness, fever, headache, loss of appetite, nausea, rash, tingling or numbness in fingers or toes, upset stomach...give me a break. I hate taking medicine anyway but know I better finish this round so this doesn't get worse. Oh I forgot, it also turns your urine some radioactive green looking color. I have been irritable and cranky today and fell asleep to the point of drooling on myself, I feel better now! Hopefully that was enough rest to make it until bedtime.

Ancient Egypt- Mummies and Such

I had a doctor's appointment today so I left the kids a list of sites to visit in my list of favorites. Below are some links:

The Story of King Tut

You wouldn't want to be a mummy!: This is one of those cartoony sites that explains the gory details of mummification in a comical way. My kids do not usually like this kind of thing but even Tera thought it was hilarious.

A short King Tut exhibit video

Escape from the Mummy's Tomb- video game

King Tut Picture Gallery

Egyptian Scribes and tons of other Egypt info

Hieroglyphics Generator

Rosetta Stone info

They also learned how to play a strategy game from Egypt called Nine Men's Morris. Here is an online version: Nine Men's Morris

We did a painting on a surface project from this book: Art for Fun Projects that was comparable to the Egyptian cave drawings found. I really like this book because it pairs a technique from a specific artist with a project. The students then try the technique in their own work of art.

We also designed our own sarcophagus. It seems like a kinda morbid activity. Tera gave hers a smiley face.

That was our crazy day!

Ancient Egypt and other Fun

We had a group of friends over today for music and math activities. In Math, the kids worked as a group to rearrange shapes into three squares by sharing pieces. Sounds easy but they couldn't talk at all while trading. Now I know my kids can be quiet for at least a few minutes, so I'll start expecting that more around here. Then they had a people puzzle, where they had to move around the floor one place at a time until everyone reached their specific place. Those puzzles always confuse me if they are not on paper, but the kids all worked together and everyone made it "home".
I taught a group music lesson. We learned about Beethoven, today. Made listening maps to go with his 5th symphony. Composed ABA 8 beat musical pieces- first on body percussion and then instruments as a large group/smaller groups. Learned a musical story- The Farmyard Song and then assigned each animal an instrument. Played Taco Dip on the Booms.



I woke up late again so we had our Egypt lessons after lunch today. We made salt clay cartouche. Those are Tera and Daniel's name in an adapted form of hieroglyphics we found online.



Then we played around code breaking... Then painted our own hieroglyphic codes...

We also reviewed a Bible verse from last week by making a doorhanger and reviewed some electricity information by making an insulator collage.

Michael just says: "Cheese!"
Tomorrow we are talking about mummies and King Tut so stay tuned!

Ancient Egypt-Take 1

We started our week long unit on Ancient Egypt. I took a great deal of the ideas from the site:

Lesson Pathways

Ancient Egypt Geography

Mummy Experiment: Mummifying an apple to see which type of salt does the best job of mummification. We used baking soda, table salt and epsom salt then did mixtures of salts. Our eighth cup will be just a plain apple for a control. We weighed each apple quarter first then will weigh them in a week to determine which mixture would be the best choice.

Sand Paper Art
I thought their Sand Paper Art turned out great. Not only did they look good, they actually drew scenes from Egyptian life on their own without prompting. I had to stop them at three a piece. Timeline

We wrote in our timelines today. I am so happy about that, I really wanted to incorporate timelines this year. So studying the ancient civilizations is giving us a great opportunity.

Here are some other sites: Egyptian Town Life on the Nile
Egyptian Artifacts Game Who Owns the Rosetta Stone? Mapping Activity Now school is done for the day but the kids pulled out a library book on How to Draw Ancient Egypt...so although "school" may be done the learning is definitely not!