I am loving My Fathers World Creation to the Greeks! I think I like it more than the kids. We are in the middle of learning about ancient Egypt, about mummies and pharoahs and pyramids. I've been meaning to blog throughout each week because I love looking at other blogs and getting ideas from them and seeing how they are doing their projects. I've been taking pictures, but I haven't uploaded them yet.
I'll start here with week 5, where we are now. Today we mummified apples and Barbie dolls! Dad did the apples with them and I did the dolls. The boys were totally freaked out by the naked Barbies and did not want to touch them. Hope that stays with them during those hormonal teenage years!
My friend Lori and I worked at a Scholastic Book warehouse this summer and got about $150 worth of free books. I got about 8 books on pyramids, mummies and ancient Egypt to supplement the curriculum. We used Magic Tree House's "Mummies and Pyramids" to replicate the steps of making the mummies. We loosely followed
this blog for the apple mummification.
Sorry the pics are blurry, they were taken with my phone. I'll try and take better ones with my camera!
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Putting apple slices into cups. Each cup held something different, salt, baking soda, vinegar, epsom salt. We put an apple slice by itself in one to compare. |
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Pyramids from the CTG book. | |
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Making pyramids on Minecraft (and also my feet. You're welcome.) |
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Getting ready to mummify the dolls |
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We drew hearts to show that they leave the hearts inside while removing all the other organs. |
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Canopic jars to hold the organs. This is the falcon, which holds the intestines. |
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You can see the organs here: the stomach (yellow), the liver (blue), the lungs (red) and the intestines (blue). |
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Washing with the "bodies" with white (cooking) wine. It had been expired since January, but worked just fine for this purpose. |
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Rubbing on the spices and oils. |
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"Covering" the deceased with salt for 40 days (or 4 minutes, each minute representing 10 days) to dry them out. Oh and the lines on the side of the doll represent the cut they made to remove the organs. |
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Wrapping the mummy in cloth (gauze from the Dollar Tree dipped in flour and water). |
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Adding the amulets, charms that the ancient Egyptians thought would help them in the next life. |
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Done! |