Tag: Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt Read Aloud Books – 2nd Time Through

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Ancient Egypt Read Aloud Books – 2nd Time Through

We are pretty relaxed/eclectic homeschoolers, but one subject we’ve continued to approach in a more orderly manner over the years is history. We start at the beginning of time and then work through all of history to the present day. Rinse and repeat!

As I’ve stated many times in past posts our main approach to learning history has been through reading living books. This has been a very rewarding way to learn history and has helped me and my kids have a more full picture of history, rather than just learning and regurgitating important dates.

This year we have also added in The Mystery of History as our spine. It’s been a nice addition for us!

This past fall we started the whole history cycle again beginning with Ancient History. And we just recently finished going through Ancient Egypt for the 2nd time. (Here are the activities we did and books we read the first time we studied Ancient Egypt four years ago.)

History Timeline

For the past four years we’ve put all significant historical events on our history timeline (we did this using butcher paper and having the kids draw the events on the paper.)

Ancient Egypt Read Aloud Books
Having fun with our giant timeline on butcher paper

Since we started the whole history cycle again this past fall, I decided we’d change it up, so instead of drawing historical events on butcher paper, I bought each of the kids their own timeline book. They are really enjoying the timeline books so far!

Big sister (9th grade!) is actually taking world history (using this curriculum) at a local co-op this year, so she doesn’t typically join in on our read-alouds, but she IS doing the timeline book with her younger brothers.

Ancient Egypt Read Aloud Books
Three different interpretations of King Tut
List of Ancient Egypt Read Aloud Books (2nd Time Around)

Here are the books we did as read-alouds for Ancient Egypt this year. 

The Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt

The Riddle of the Rosetta Stone

Unwrapping the Pharaohs: How Egyptian Archaeology Confirms the Biblical Timeline

Tirzah

To find even more books, check out our book list from the first time we studied Ancient Egypt.

And here are our booklists for Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece.

Happy reading and learning!

 

 

 

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Books to help you explore Ancient Egypt

I recently wrote a post about hands-on activities to help you explore Ancient Egypt. THIS post is a complementary post to that one, on books you can use to study Ancient Egypt.

Included in this list are the books that we found the most interesting and ones that sparked great conversation.  As I’ve shared in other posts, we like to use mostly living books for studying history. We used them as read-alouds.

There are so many books about Ancient Egypt to pick from!  This is just a fraction (but a GOOD fraction) of them!

This blog post contains affiliate links and any purchases made through these links will result in a small commission for me (at no cost to you!).

Usborne Books

Oh, how we love our Usborne books!  The two Usborne books that we used the most as we studied Ancient Egypt were Time Traveler and Pharaoh’s & Pyramids

Time Traveler is a great one that covers many different age periods and the Ancient Egypt portion is just one part of the book.  My daughter actually reads this one a lot but more for the section on the Middle Ages.

Pharaoh’s & Pyramids is out of print, but you can probably get it from your library or eBay.  The pictures are just so detailed and even humorous at times.  We had a great time looking at this one together.  This one is not available on Amazon but you can probably find it at your local library or eBay.

What I love about Usborne non-fiction, is the way they just take small parts of text and include it amidst great illustrations.  They can be used by all different ages of kids.

Historical Fiction Novels

A Cry From Egypt by Hope Auer

A Cry From Egypt was not on my original book list for the year, but a friend of mine who is doing Cycle 1 with CC, posted that her family had enjoyed this book.  I was not able to get it at the library so I purchased this one on Amazon.

My kids REALLY liked this one.  With lots of cliffhangers and tons of heart, this book was a favorite.  It’s the story of a 12 year old Jewish girl living during the time of the 10 plagues.   The kids begged me every day to read more.  There is a sequel, A Stand at Sinai, that my daughter begged me to buy.  She read it on her own and loved it as well.

The Golden Goblet by Eloise Jarvis McGraw

Also set in Ancient Egypt, The Golden Goblet is the story of Ranofer, an Egyptian boy who lives under the oppression and abuse of his evil half-brother, Gebu.  Ranofer’s main desire is to be a master goldsmith, but he has to figure out a way to escape Gebu.

This novel was not as much of a crowd pleaser as A Cry from Egypt, and my son liked it much more than my daughter.  It was slower to start but still very interesting and shed light on what life was like for common people in Ancient Egypt.

Picture books (not just for younger kids!)

The 5,000-Year-Old Puzzle: Solving a Mystery of Ancient Egypt by Claudia Logan

The reader can participate in what an actual archaeological dig would have been like.  This book uses actual historical information from Dr. George Reisner’s archaeological dig of 1924.  It puts it together in a way that really engages the reader.  Lots of great pictures combined with information in a very pleasing format.

Ancient Egypt by Daniel Cohen

What makes this book stand out is the exceptional and large illustrations.  The illustrations are accompanied by text on each page and you will know a ton more about Ancient Egypt after reading this informative book!  Unfortunately, this is another one that is hard to find.  I was able to get it at our local library.

 

If you’re looking for a movie, then there, of course, is the beloved Prince of Egypt, always a favorite!

Check out my other history book lists!

Ancient Greece

Ancient Rome

Middle Ages

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Hands-On Activities for Ancient Egypt

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.

This blog post contains affiliate links and any purchases made through such links will result in a small commission for me (at no extra cost to you).
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:

Mummified Apple Experiment
Materials: 10 labeled cups, 2 apples, salt, baking soda, vinegar, sugar, gauze

Apples covered with baking soda, sugar, salt:

Mummified Apple Experiment

Apples in vinegar:

Mummified Apple Experiment

Control apples:

Mummified Apple Experiment

We made our predictions of which preservatives would work the best:

Mummified Apple Experiment

Then we put the apples in a warm, dark spot for the next week!

Mummified Apple Experiment

One week later, we “unearthed” our mummies and investigated the apples.  These were our results!

Mummified Apple Experiment

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.

Ancient Egypt Activities

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:

2 cups flour, 1 cup of salt,  1 cup of water, 1 tbsp oil
Then we began molding onto the map.

Salt Dough Map Ancient Egypt

 

Since parts of Egypt are more mountainous, we used Google Earth to explore the contour of the land and molded the map accordingly:

Salt Dough Map Ancient Egypt

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.

Salt Dough Map Ancient Egypt

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!

Toothpick and Marshmallow Pyramids

Are you studying Ancient Egypt?  Any activities I didn’t mention here?  Please comment with links or ideas below!

 

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