Mystery of History: Lesson Eleven – Early Egyptians

The girls have studied the Egyptians before, but they were still fascinated to revisit it again. I’m getting used to reining myself in and not doing too much per MOH lesson.

Early Egyptians – Reading

I read out the lesson from the Mystery of History text book.

Early Egyptians: Map Work

I used a map activity from Homeschool in the Woods (see here for review). We had a chat about each of its geographical features as well as its historical ones:

Early Egyptians: Pyramids

As we have covered pyramids before, this time the girls just completed some lap type books:

Early Egyptians: Egyptian Clothes

I will be making some Egyptian dolls clothes, but we revisit this culture so much over the first year of MOH I thought I would spread things out a little. This lesson, the girls coloured in some Egyptian dolls and their clothes:

After dressing their dolls, they started playing with them making up ever more extravagant stories:

After which they created some note pages with them:

Early Egyptians: Mummies

Again, we have already covered mummies, and even mummified a whole chicken before. So this time I did something which took minutes rather than months. We got this idea from Homeschool in the Woods again:

The girls made the following note pages:

The girls created a human body shape from some foil:

Then covered it in masking tape:

After, they covered them in strips of material covered in watery plaster:

Whilst the mummies dried, the girls coloured in their funerary masks:

When at last the plaster strips had dried (in the end we had to dry them on a hot radiator), the girls stuck on the accessories:

Early Egyptians: Art Study – Relief Work

This was a very impromptu art study, as I came across these molds the day before. As I had the plaster out for the mummies, I quickly whipped up some extra for this additional activity:

They came out well, and showed very clearly what reliefs were. They also demonstrated an art method which was rigidly adhered to in ancient Egyptian times: Frontalism

We looked through some different art from the Egyptians, and knowing we would cover it again in another lesson, the girls simply got on with the job of painting their reliefs:

It was much harder than they first thought, but never the less lots of messy fun was had:

Their final reliefs:

Early Egyptian: Writing

This was another impromptu activity which came about from a rather auspicious find at a charity shop:

It was such a blessing! I decided to give a lesson on writing letters, at the same time as teaching written narrations.

I created some vocab folders and asked them to pretend they were one of the characters from the picture book, Croconile. They were to write a letter to their Granny and tell her of all the adventures they’d had in Ancient Egypt:

Their vocab folder:

They used the Egyptian cards to add the letter to, decorated it with stickers and sent them off with an Egyptian stamp to Granny next door.

A decent lesson about a fascinating culture!