Learning about Ancient Egypt

One of our themed studies this week was on Egypt.  We are doing Sonlight curriculum for social studies/history/geography.  I am very thankful that a friend of mine who used this program with her children was able to tell me before I bought the curriculum that the one thing she did not like was that the social studies skimmed over various topics (Rome, Egypt, Greece, etc) fairly quickly. She also told me that it seemed to her that most K-1st grade social studies programs tended to skim over topics quickly, so if you wanted to do something more indepth, modification was in order.  Since I had that heads up, I was able to modify a few things and check out a bunch of books from the library and pin some things on Pinterest so we could go "more in depth" to study ancient Egypt. I mean, seriously, Ancient Egypt is absolutely fascinating.  There is so much to talk about!

We started our week learning about ancient egyptian dwellings, food, life-style, dress

and caste system.  We talked about how Pharaoh ruled Egypt.   We talked about the numerous gods and goddesses ancient Egyptians believed in.  We talked about their belief in the afterlife and why they made mummies.  We found Egypt and the Nile river on our map.  Then we made an Egyptian "collar."  We did not have gold spray paint on hand, so silver had to do.  We had some leftover gems from our pirate treasure making this summer, and the kids used those to decorate along with glitter.

On Tuesday, we made cartouche's from a heiroglyphics key in one of our library books.   Ryan practiced writing his name in heiroglyphics and found it amazing that pictures could form words like our ABC's formed words for us.

On Wednesday we discussed the mummification process and the pyramids that acted as giant tombs. That grossed Ryan out quite a bit. We made hot dog mummies for lunch.

On Thursday, we learned about life in modern Egypt.  We discussed the similarities and differences between life in the past and life today in Egypt.  

On Friday, we took a field trip to the Natural History Museum to see their display on Ancient Egypt.  We saw an Egyptian boat, artifacts including needles made of bone and hooks made of wood and iron.  We also saw plenty of beautiful jewelry.  Of course, we also saw mummies.  We saw mumified birds, cats and a baby crocodile.  We saw human mummies.  Ryan said his favorite part was looking at the golden statues and death masks.  

Some of the books on ancient and modern egypt we found at our library include: 

1. National Geographic Kids Everything Ancient Egypt by Crispin Boyer

2.  Adventures in Ancient Egypt by Linda Bailey

3. Ms. Frizzles Adventures: Ancient Egypt by Joanna Cole

4. King Tut's Tomb by Amanda Doering Tourville

5. Pyramids by Kremena Spengler

6. Beginning History: Egyptian Pyramids by Anne Steel

7, Countries of the World: Egypt by Kathleen W. Deady

8. See-Through Mummies by John Malam

9. Ancient Egypt Tales of Gods and Pharaohs

We did not get to the Sphynx and Ryan is not old enough to read "The Egypt Game," but....there's always 2nd grade, 3rd grade, 4th grade, 5th grade and 6th grade to revisit all things Egypt!