Books:

Internet Sources:

Ancient India – The British Museum site.  Explore the Indus Valley and play a game!

Harappa – Lots of links with info to explore, pictures, slideshows, etc.

Indus Valley – A BBC website.  Loads of fun with games, exploration, and printables for parents & teachers/

Sydni’s:

It’s me Sydni.  I am just going to start from the beginning.  First you get this long metal thingy and stick it through his nose and you mash up his brain.  Then you cut the body open and take all his stuff [organs] out and put them in jars.  Put the salt on him and then let him dry up and shrink and stuff.  Then you put oil on him and some other kind of stuffing and then you wrap him up.

Sydni was talking into that recorder like she was a contestant in a beauty pageant.  I was totally cracking up!  She has been very hesitant to narrate in the past, so I am pleased that she seemed eager to do this one.  YAY!

Zoey’s:

They put a hook in the nose and then they pull out the brain and then they pull out all of the organs and place them in these jars.  Then you tip the body over then the liquid goes out.  Then you stuff it with something and some salt.  Then you wait for 80 days and the salt is dry.  It’s natron salt.  Then you get off the salt and take all the stuffing out and then you stuff new stuff in it and then you put this oil-like glue on.  Then you wrap it up and put thingies [amulets] on it then you wrap it up and you have a mummy.

Can I just say that I was SUPER impressed with Zoey’s first ‘real’ narration?!?!  She has been looking over all the Egypt books in the house and played that mummy game about four times yesterday.

Before I add Cole’s, I am going to say that he made a spelling error that turned into some rather graphic human-on-mummy violence.  He meant to type “wrap” and its various forms.  I laughed out loud when reading it the first time, so I hope you find it humorous and not offensive!!

Cole’s:

How to make a mummy:  You take the brain out with a special hook tool.  You cut the stumach area and take out the orgins and put them each in a jar with the difrent god headed tops.  The orgins are the lungs,stumach,intestines,liver. BUT KEEP THE HEART THE MUMMY NEEDS IT FOR LATER.  Then you put patches in the cut where the stumach is and then you put natron on the body and wait 40 days.  After those 40 days they put oil on the body then they rap the body in linen then put amulets on the linen and rap it again.   After raping it they would put a mask on it then they put the raped body in 2 cases.  Then at his funaral the people hire morners.  And after his funeral, up in the world of the egypt gods, anubus scales the heart of the body and if its heart had too many lies it gets eaten but if it has truth it will be spared.

*AHEM*  Poor mummy!  He has no idea what it really says, of course.  There are some corrections to make, obviously, but he did manage to do a pretty darn good job.  The colon in the beginning was all his idea (and I am pretty happy to see it!), as well as a few commas and the correct use of the word ‘too.’  This is not his first written narration, but it was his first time typing one.

One of our hands-on activities this week was to make a salt dough map of Egypt.  The kids had a blast mixing up the salt dough.

(Except for maybe Cole who has never really enjoyed having his hands dirty.)

Then shaping Egypt and painting once it was dry…

And finally turning it into this very cool relief map:

I am super proud!

You will have to figure me if the map is not exactly perfect.  It was my intention to trace an outline of Egypt onto the cardboard, but my computer is acting up and my Microsoft office suite is not working at all.  So, I drew the outline myself while looking at an image online.  We did our best to shape the dough within the outline.  LOL!

We will continue to label the map and add tiny pyramids and other features before we leave Egypt for other areas of study.

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