Wordless Wednesday: The Walters

Mummies

Choclo and Oob asked if they could be wrapped up like mummies.

Sure!  I was setting up one of the last Chemistry classes, so I asked Klenda to wrap.

She actually does a much neater job than I do!


It turned out they only wanted one mummy because the other one was going to be a professor, lecturing on mummies. 

Why, yes, we do watch a lot of documentaries, why do you ask?

The professor explained that this 5000 year old mummy was very special because it had not had it's brain removed.

Suddenly, to the horror of the gathered crowd, the mummy began to move!

Fortunately, it turned out that the mummy just wanted a hug from his mummy!

Back to Egypt Part 3: Favorite Ancient Egypt Resources

A little cuddle on the couch with his mummy

So, aside from warehouse club packages of toilet paper, here are some great resources we found in our Egyptian study.

The Amazing Pop-Up, Pull-Out Mummy Book.  As you can see, it's not exactly a book, more a kid sized, pop-out mummy with cool flaps to look under, and interesting text boxes.

I'm not saying that Choclo loves this mummy, just that he enjoys hanging out with it at all times and doesn't want it out of his sight.

We got it used in very good condition, and it really was in great condition!

Also, during The Great Library Sort of 2014, we discovered we had another mummy pop up book, because, you know, how can you ever have too many?

This was the excellent Egpytian Mummies: A Pop Up Book.  It's more bookish, but with lots of great pop ups and "lift the flap" discoveries.  We actually found about a dozen fun books on Ancient Egypt, but what I really wanted to share was the free web resources!

First off, Pinterest is a gold mine of Egyptian ideas. Several gold mines, in fact!

Our favorites were this mummification game.  Possibly not for the faint of heart, but, if you can get past the brain, it's fine.  I'm just saying preview it!  The same site had a nice hieroglyph translator (see your name in hieroglyphs).

If you are a fan of the "You wouldn't Want to.." series, they have the mummy one (and several others) online and interactive here. 

There's an interesting interactive CT scan of mummies here.

We also loved the Egyptian Mad Libs.  Actually, there were lots of fun things at that site, but we really liked our Mad Lib story of Cleopatra:

The Egyptian queen Auntie Em was totally Greek but is believed to have been able to read, write, and speak Egyptian. She was married to her blue brother David Attenborough and they ruled Egypt together, although they hated each other. He tried to have her killed but Auntie Em was tipped off and she fled to Pennsylvania. She returned with an army and the two had a stand off with neither side willing to budge. At about the same time, the Roman Street Sweeper Agent Coleson arrived on the scene. He sided with Auntie Em and killed David Attenborough. Auntie Em and Agent Coleson became romantically involved and had a son. She followed Agent Coleson back to Rome and stayed there until his death. Then she and her son returned to Egypt to explode. After Agent Coleson defenestrated, there was a power struggle between his adopted son Larry Boy and his friend Swamp Thing. Auntie Em became romantically involved with Swamp Thing and they hoped to create a truly stinky kingdom of Egypt and Rome together. In 31 BC the feud between Larry Boy and Swamp Thing erupted into a battle at sea off the coast of Greece. Swamp Thing and Auntie Em ditched the battle and fled back to Egypt, defeated. The following year, Larry Boy came to Egypt to assume control. Auntie Em didn't want to be humiliated by being paraded through Rome as a sandwich, so she pickled herself, supposedly by letting a poisonous penguin bite her. Egypt was now part of the Roman Empire and was thereafter ruled by emperors, not pharaohs.

Lastly, this video, set to music, was a nice "capstone" to a study of Ancient Egypt  It's only about 5 minutes, and evidently is part of a series: Music of History.  I plan to look into more of these.

Back to Egypt Part 2

 Part of what kicked off the big interest in all things Egypt, was this marvelous little kit: Lift the Lid on Mummies.

It comes in. a wonderful sarcophagus box with a secret drawer, and it has a wrappable pharoah with removable organs (and little canopic jars to store them in!).  This is either marvelous, creepy, or marvelously creepy.

Choclo at one point walked up to me with a canopic jar and said, "I have a surprise. Look!  It's a liver!!"

To which I replied, "Um, yes!  Don't do that to Grammy."

That may fall into the creepy category.

 Moving right along...

I should give fair warning that the canopic jar bases have to be cut out and taped together.

There is also a cut out 3D cat mummy that is the most complicated paper thing I have ever assembled.



On the plus side, the enclosed book is really excellent, and it integrates the instructions with extra information in a way that Choclo found captivating.

He created a little museum in his room to show off his new treasures, and, when he lost one of the canopic jar lids, we actually bought a whole extra kit so that he could do the project again (although I held the line at doing the cat mummy over).

My advice, however, would be to go through one of the non "Prime" sellers, as that made it a about $5 cheaper.

As always, I wasn't paid to write this, or given the kit (either time!), just sharing the fun.

Back to Egypt: Part 1

Whenever a kid asks to learn more about Ancient Egypt, I always ask: do you want to learn about Egypt, or do you just want to be wrapped up like a mummy?

This time, Choclo's answer was: BOTH!!!

All right, then!

So here is Choclo, all wrapped up and reading Egypt in Spectacular Cross-Section.

 We've been watching all kinds of documentaries on mummies, pyramids, and Egypt.

We've been building pyramids. I was thinking about what angles were needed to make the pyramid come out even: it turns out the sides are equilateral triangles.

Guess what's in the big one?

And we made step pyramids.



And fancier step pyramids

 And golden sarcophagi...

And... mummies!!!

That's a minifig wrapped up is strands of tissue, BTW.

And we're thinking about mummifying a chicken.

More Egypt ideas from the last time we did this.

The Sojourn in Egypt Part III, or, It's a Wrap!

We didn't actually do everything I had thought we might, but we did food. We made flat bread (but didn't put sand in it, I was thinking of it for authenticity...) and date-honey candy (yum!).

We skipped the costumes, but then, a lot of Egyptians at the time skipped the costumes, too.

We made cat statues! Paper mache around water bottles. That was fun!

We made shabti (small statues buried with the dead to do all their manual labor in the after life) out of grated soap. You grate the soap (we used Ivory), wet your hands and then mold the soap. After it hardens a bit, you can carve the details. I couldn't quite get the camera to show the details on ours. Actual shabti are sort of plain and mummy like also.

We really liked the grated soap thing - it lends itself to all sorts of sculpturing possibilities! Alas, I used my food processor to grate the soap and it was really tough to clean out and tossing it into the dish washer was not the right move. Unless you like your dishwasher to foam at the mouth.

On the plus side, unlike most craft projects, they can be recycled as soap!

The Grand Plan called for a fabulous finish: A play in which one of the Zoomlians was mummified. This would use the outfits we didn't do, and tie everything together in a memorable way which demonstrated their thorough grasp of the subject.

But we got distracted, so we're just going to wrap all the kids in toilet paper and call it a day.

The Sojourn in Egypt Part II, or, Shaduf!

Half way through as I write this, this is what we've done so far.

First off, resources:
Hands down best book ever: Great Ancient Egypt Projects You Can Build Yourself by Carmella Van Vleet. This book is a well thought out unit study! Fantastic information, interestingly presented and tons of interesting, impressive, not too difficult projects about meaningful things. Umm. I like it. And she 's written a bunch of other books! The first 2 pictures are from projects from this book. The first is a "gilded papyrus" boat (floating in my yellow bathtub.) The second is a working (!) miniature shaduf (imagine a seesaw with a rock on one end and a bucket hanging from the other end. It allows you to draw enough water from a river or canal to irrigate your fields). The book also tells you how to build a much larger shaduf, but we lacked space. And big enough sticks. And a pond. The only down side to this book: no color photos. But there are other books for that!

Like the Egyptian Mummies Pop Up Book! And if you want eye popping photos, there is always the DK line of Eye Witness books, including one on Ancient Egypt, one on the pyramids and one on King Tut. But really, that's just going to the library and picking out books with good visuals. One of the best things about a popular topic in early September is that you can choose the 15 best books about Egypt (as opposed to their one book about samurai...).


I also had a ton of stuff from Dover books including a nifty pop out book of 3 mummy cases (photo by Mxyl).(Oooh! On sale for $3.18!). I like Dover a lot. Great stuff, cheap and they send out free samples every week (which is what got us hooked on Beowulf)! We have several Egyptian themed coloring books from them also.

We have a number of Egyptian themed (store bought) posters hanging around, including one that came with stickers to make a scene. I am hoping to make a mural later.


Naturally, when I asked what the weekly cookies should be, they wanted mummy cookies. Hmm. Yummy Mummy cookies. I found some recipes online, but decided they were too much work, so I adapted my favorite candy cane cookie recipe. I dropped the mint and red color and added almond flavoring. They were a bit like Mexican Wedding cookies with out the nuts. The main thing was they were sculptable into mummy like shapes... I used powdered sugar at the end to make the lines more visible. I made a double batch but am giving the recipe as a single batch.

Recipe for Yummy Mummies:
1 c. butter (can be part shortening)
1 1/4 c. powdered sugar
1 egg
2 tsp almond extract
2 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 c flour
1 tsp salt
extra powdered sugar for rolling

Heat oven to 375 degrees.
Cream butter and sugar.
Mix in egg, salt and flavorings.
Mix in flour.
Roll into oblongs or mummy shapes.
Make diagonal crossing lines (for wrappings) with a knife.
Bake 9 minutes, then roll or sprinkle with powdered sugar.


That brings us to yesterday. I decided we needed to see an actual mummy, so we had a "Take Mommy to See a Mummy" day. For all the times I've wished for a more rural lifestyle, I must admit it was nice to think about which free world class museum to visit to look at their mummies.

We went to the Walters. We saw 3 mummies (a woman, a child, and a cat) complete with canopic jars and nesting sarcophagi (but none of black stone!). We also saw 2 large stone statues of the cat goddess Sekhmet, which Zorg loved. She's the one with the lion head instead of the more peaceful Bastet.

We have talked quite a bit about Egyptian religion, belief in life after death, and the intersections of Egyptian history with the Bible. It's been a good way to talk about how and why other people have different beliefs than our own.

I forgot about the cat statues we made! And the ancient Egyptian candy! What would an immersive unit study be without food! Ah, well! More later.

The Sojourn in Egypt Part I, or, Who Wants Their Mummy?

Actually, aside from birthday shenanigans, we've spent the last week and a half in ancient Egypt. It looks like we'll still be there quite a while, too!

This was not the plan.

The plan was to go through Child's History of the World and make side trips into interesting time periods as we came to them.

The Zoomlians laugh in the face of such linear thinking!

"Can we learn about Egypt?" Zorg wanted to know. Usually it's Leena who asks that question. Usually followed by, "Can you wrap me up like a mummy?"

I was hesitant.

I remembered a remark from the Queen of Carrots that the down side of unit studies was the repetition of subjects.

We've done Egypt. Then I thought some more: it had been 3 or 4 years since we had really "done" Egypt. Zorg would have been 3 or 4 years old!

I thought some more.

Egypt is one of those topics that begs for in depth immersive unit studies. There are so many fabulous resources it's hard to narrow it down. We haven't done a big, knock your socks off, sustained high tide thing in a while.

Plus... I was 6 years old when I went on a field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and saw their Egyptian collection. I'm not sure I ever got over the wonder and the realization of how vast and old and amazingly different the world is.

Fortunately, I did get over the terror of seeing the stone sarcophagus! It was massive, hewn from black stone. At that time it was lying in the center of a room on a dais. So big I couldn't really see inside except for the steel rod which held the lid ajar. Looking it up now was the first time I had seen it since. As a child, I don't think I saw the carving on the lid; to me it was just cold, black, primal stone. I had several nightmares about being trapped inside for thousands of years...

Looking back, I wonder if that fear is part of what made the wonder so vivid. If so, I'm thankful for it. The fear ebbed, but the wonder at the wide strange world remains.

OK! Lets do it!