We have been studying Ancient Egypt for a few weeks now, and I am thoroughly enjoying it! Ancient Egypt is pretty fascinating when you think about the pyramid building, mummies, pharaoh’s, etc. If you’re looking for books to explore Ancient Egypt check out this post.
In the past, we haven’t been as hands-on with history, as I primarily rely on using living books for teaching history. However, there are so many hands-on activities that go along with Ancient Egypt, that we used books AND hands-on activities to learn more about what was life was like for Egyptians of old.
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MUMMIFIED APPLE EXPERIMENT
Our FAVORITE activity was the Mummified Apples.
Materials:
10 apple slices (from 2 apples)
baking soda, salt, sugar, vinegar
Gauze
Plastic cups
We prepared each apple slice differently. We wrapped 5 apples with gauze and the other 5 were left uncovered. Then each set of two (gauze and no gauze) was covered with a different ingredient- baking soda, salt, sugar, vinegar – in a plastic cup, with the exception of the control apples which were left as is.
Getting everything ready:
Apples covered with baking soda, sugar, salt:
Apples in vinegar:
Control apples:
We made our predictions of which preservatives would work the best:
Then we put the apples in a warm, dark spot for the next week!
One week later, we “unearthed” our mummies and investigated the apples. These were our results!
We found that the apples covered in salt fared the best!
Hieroglyphics
We didn’t spend a lot of time on this activity but it was still interesting and gave us a feel for the Egyptian’s method of writing. We used this stamping kit, to write our names in hieroglyphics. I had also printed out a hieroglyphic alphabet I found on the internet, though the two did not match up exactly. This frustrated the kids a bit but I explained it’s similar to different dialects in our language.
Salt Dough Map
I’ve been a homeschool mom for 6 years and this was our first salt-dough map! It was easier than I expected and tons of fun. We’ll be doing this again.
First I printed out an outline map of Ancient Egypt, along with a detailed map of Ancient Egypt (You can find both maps on my Ancient History Pinterest board here.)
I drew a (not so great) sketch of Ancient Egypt into a pizza box from our recycling bin. It didn’t have to be a perfect sketch because it was going to get covered up with dough and paint anyway!
To make our salt dough we mixed together:
Since parts of Egypt are more mountainous, we used Google Earth to explore the contour of the land and molded the map accordingly:
After letting it dry and set for about a week, the kids painted the rivers and mountains and labeled the main places with toothpick markers.
We loved doing this and it helped solidify a lot of the Ancient Egypt locations in the kids’ minds.
My favorite moment was when Joe exclaimed, “Wait… that’s where Sinai is!?”
Last but not least…
Toothpick and Marshmallow Pyramids
For this one, I bought a bag of mini marshmallows and a pack of toothpicks, and just let the kids go. All three kids really got into this activity!
Are you studying Ancient Egypt? Any activities I didn’t mention here? Please comment with links or ideas below!
