I was very excited to teach the children about hieroglyphs, especially because it meant lots of lovely hands on activities. We started off with a couple of fiction books, just to whet their appetites:
I then did some read aloud and we discussed the type of activities we wanted to do:
I had traveled around Egypt as a teenager and picked up all sorts of goodies we could use – bookmarks, papyrus paper and the like. We turned these into note pages, describing what hieroglyphs were:
I had a lovely set of hieroglyph stamps which I let them play about with for a while on the understanding they had to read the booklet that came with it!
I had them write out the Egyptian alphabet on a note page and we stuck on some instructions how to make our own papyrus. Although I had some proper papyrus, we all thought this sounded too fun to pass up:
And finally I asked them to make a cartouche of their name on the real papyrus, using the stamps:
We learnt about Champollion and cracking the code reading these two books:
I read them out loud, and the children read the second many times. I think this book is one of the best historical picture books ever written and I highly recommend it!! It is a true story book on Champollion’s life and I seriously can’t say enough good about it! After ensuring the children fully understood the story, we did a key word outline together covering his life and I asked the children to write a three paragraph essay about him. I gave as much or as little help as needed for each child:
We were so enjoying our time with the Ancient Egyptians!
Thought you might get a kick out of this for your Egypt section:
Lisa, should a link have come through? I’m not seeing anything!
I like the stamp set. Where did you get it from?
I think I got it off amazon. HTH
I LOVE hieroglyphs, even if I can never spell the word on the first try.
Or the second.
He, He, I’m saying nothing……..!!
I think all your post qualify for Hobbies and Handicrafts. This is really cool. Reading your ancient Egypt posts is getting me excited to study Egypt. The stamps are so cool. Thank you for posting all these lessons.
It’s my pleasure. I’ll pop over and link up! Thanks for the lovely comment!
You guys have such great studies! I am getting so excited for our study =-)
Thanks for linking up to TGIF! I hope to see you again tomorrow!
Beth =-)
Hi Beth, Thanks so much for the lovely comment! And yup I’ll be linking up tomorrow!!