Ancient Egypt for Children

I've unearthed some great resources for teaching Ancient Egyptian history to children. Below are some fantastic links that you're going to want to spend some time playing with. I hope you enjoy these as much as we have been!

King Tut's Virtual Tomb

                 but first read...

Howard Carter Finds King Tut's Tomb

Egyptian Tomb Adventure

Practice your hand at making your own mummy here and here!

Pyramid Builder

Ancient Egypt for Kids - TONS of links!

Tapestry of Grace Arts and Activities

FREE RESOURCES: MODEL CUT-OUTS

I love free stuff. I love finding treasures online that mean all I have to do is turn on my printer and press a button. Here are couple that I think you might like:


CANON CREATIVE PARK ~ Tons of paper craft model printables, some complex, some simple

PAPER TOYS ~ paper models for kids and grown-ups alike

The Crafty Crow: Crafts Around the World

Let me introduce you to the inspiring  

Crafty Crow 

a blog filled with wonders and insights, creativity and delight!

And if you are like me, you'll enjoy 

this fantastic new string of posts 

inspiring us history lovers with crafts and recipes that are sure to make your fingers tingle. Follow the link and dive in! (The Turkey post was a hit with me since we lived in Turkey for two years.)

And as an added bonus, here's another great idea linked from the Crafty Crow (and relinked by me...just keep passing it around)─Slotted Building Discs from Made by Joel! Methinks my kiddos will enjoy this one!

Giant Funness

For a fun rainy day activity (or even when it's nice outside), check out this  

GIANT GEOBOARD project

from Filth Wizardry. 

I can almost guarantee your kids will love it. I'm planning to make one soon myself!

Just had to share these marvelous paper crafts. I am in total AWE!
Stock up on some paper and ink, and go to town!

Canon Paper Crafts

Make sure to check out the left side menu for Science, History, and Architecture crafts!

Five Star Blogger

I have officially found my new favorite blogger─Ree Drummond at The Pioneer Woman. I am stunned by the fun, inspiring, whimsical, and true-to-self posts on this blog. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Aquatic Crafts

I couldn't help but pass these on. They're cute and easy─two things I love in a craft idea. Follow the links and enjoy!

Egg Carton Octopus
Recycled Bottle Fish
Starfish
Toilet Paper Roll Octopus
Paper Towel Roll Octopus

The Tail of Two Otters

Our 9 and 7 year old boys have written a wonderful little puppet show for two sea otter sock puppets that we made back in our first year of home school. I'd like to share it with you. You may use it and the sock puppet idea if you like. Feel free to print and perform the play for friends and family as much as you like.

Here are the materials we used for the sock puppets:

• tall brown socks
• buttons for eyes
• tan or cream colored felt for mouth (sewed on)
• tan or cream colored felt for ears (also sewed on)
• black felt for nose (sewed on top of mouth piece)
• cotton balls for stuffing nose and mouth area to give it shape
• fishing line for whiskers
• black felt tipped marker for shading felt in ears and around mouth (optional)
• needle and thread to sew on felt pieces (use a whip stitch as shown in video below)

How to Sew a Whip Stitch -- powered by eHow.com


I have attached patterns for the mouth, nose, and ear pieces here. Forgive my lack of artistry on the drawings. They are rough, but they work.

Here is the play!

From our house to yours, enjoy!

*Please do not copy this to any other sites without permission. You may link directly to my site or directly to this post if you wish.

~I have to laugh at myself~

I am definitely the queen of coming up with 
crazy ideas.

I've been trying to really back off the "public school style" approach to our schooling this year. I feel as though it's had us in a real tizzy the last few years; but because it's what I grew up with, it's the only way I'm familiar with. We don't often sit in on other people's home school experiences, but over the last couple of years I've watched and learned from other people in the "business". Hopefully I've gained some wisdom, and hopefully I've passed some on. We'll see.

So, back to laughing at myself. With my last post, I shared that our oldest son has an infection on his cheek. With my un-schooling approach, I thought it would make a fun learning experience. Then, I thought, why not do an art project to go with it!? Oh, I'm so silly. But, I did it anyway.

Here are the results:

GERM MODELS!! 

Staphylococcus  looks like a bunch of grapes. To create this look, we used stretchy string (usually used to make bracelets) and small pom poms.

Tie three (or more) strands of stretchy string together on one end.

Using a needle, thread pom poms onto each individual strand.

(Use a different number of pom poms for each strand.)

When finished, tie loose ends of string together to keep pom poms from falling off and cut excess string.

When finished it should look like a bunch of grapes. Because the string is stretchy, it creates a nice tight bunch. If it's too tight, just pull pom poms back away from each other slightly before tying it off.

Streptococcus looks like a long string of pearls.
Using one strand of the same stretchy string, tie a knot at one end and thread a needle at the other.
Thread pom poms onto the string, pulling each one snuggly next to the one before it.
When you're satisfied with the length of your strep, knot the end and cut excess string off.

Viruses look like hitchhikers.

Use a Styrofoam ball of any size as the base.






Dip plastic headed pushpins into craft glue (dip only the metal pin part).






Push pins into the Styrofoam ball.
Allow time for the glue to dry.
Remember that it's not a toy.
Push pins and feet are not a fun combination.

The finished virus model should look like this:

Lost and Found

Over the weekend, I put a lot of time and effort into finishing the dreidel so that David could paint it and use it. After some endless sanding, I finally got it so it would spin properly. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it spins. I'm so glad I bought Mark that dremel!

Then it went missing. It was my intention for David to paint it on Monday. Monday came and went, and the dreidel was still nowhere to be found. We scoured the house to no avail.

This morning I sat down at the computer to do some emailing and my foot hit something under the desk. It was the dreidel. A day late, but that's okay. We got the painting done and it turned out beautifully. He wanted it to look like a sunset. He painted the block colors and I drew the Hebrew letters on with a black permanent marker.

I made up a cheat card so that the boys could learn to play with the Hebrew letters. They used Skittles as Hanukkah 'gelt'.

Year Three

The boys spent a week of their summer vacation time in a play put together by the Missoula Children's Theatre group. They performed a wonderfully rehearsed version of Sleeping Beauty. Check them out. They travel around the world to help communities build their children into colorful performers.

This school year started with a field trip. We actually took the field trip prior to the start of our official school year, but since it fit in so well with our first unit study, I'm claiming it as a field trip. Our first unit was on the Middle Ages. Just before moving away from Turkey, we took a trip to Antioch. Between our base and Antioch was a small Medieval style castle with a mote around it. It wasn't open since we got there late in the day, but we were able to peek inside the gates into the open courtyard. We also took a climb up onto the top of the gatehouse and saw the 'potty' that hung over the edge of the mote.

The kids very much enjoyed looking over the edge. It drove me crazy. I'm always afraid something might come crashing down and they'll go down with it.

After we returned to the States, the kids tried their hand at making a castle. My brother picked up a huge load of refrigerator boxes at a warehouse and they put them together in the back yard of my parents' house. A great battle ensued.

I'm pretty sure the dog won.

Once we started the 'official' school year (I say official because I believe that learning doesn't quit in the summer months), we had a great Medieval feast involving turkey legs, bread bowls, wassail and song, hot cross buns, bread pudding, a potato juggler, some wonderful Medieval music found on iTunes, and some very talented recorder players.

As you can see, Ethan devoured his turkey leg in fairly short order.

Once again, costumes were a part of the deal, with everyone from grandparents to aunts, uncles, and cousins playing along. We rattled some closet doors in search of proper wear.

After the feast came the games. We had jousting in the yard, but since we had no horses, the Lord of the Castle and the Surveyor of Ceremonies played the part.

I found a wonderful Medieval Castle model for David to make. It was a lot of cutting. Usborne does it right, though. It was a well made model, pretty cheap to buy, and very detailed. It even had a 'potty.'

I found some other fun additions for our curriculum at the home school convention this spring:

History of Costume Series: Medieval Costumes Paper Dolls by Tom Tierney

Knights in Armor Paper Dolls by A.G. Smith

Draw and Write Through History: The Vikings, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance
Fun, free castle stuff for kids: http://www.castles.org/index.htm
More castle stuff for kids: http://www.rencentral.com/kidskingdom/onceuponatime.shtml

Since Ethan finally hit the 1st grade, I started him in on the Christian Cottage Unit Studies as well. Instead of having the two boys in the same unit, I started him at the beginning with Roots and Relations. Here is his model of a cell. See post on Our First Year for what's in it.

We also started a fun art program this year. Another Usborne Book! They have several awesome art books available, of which I have two. I love them. The kids seem to enjoy the activities as well. I added a mosaic lesson to the book to start the year as a review of Greek and Roman art styles.

They did a wonderful job of patiently pushing their stone tiles into air drying clay.

David chose to make a design of a raft and a sea monster. He and I were reading Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne at the time, and it quickly became a favorite.

After putting together the globe puzzle he got from his Aunt for his birthday, he made sure to locate Reykjavík and point it out.

David's next unit study was called Bread of Life: Biomes, Birds, Bugs, and Bodies. We used our Teaching Tank, a wonderful home school tool that I think every family should have, to watch some plants grow both up and down. I should have taken more photos of the stages.

We also had fun making a life sized chart of the digestive system. I had David lay down on a big sheet of tag board. I traced his body and then he drew out the organs, colored them, and labeled them.

We ordered tadpoles for our Planet Frog. (see post titled Villain of the Moment, Hero of the Day) We're still watching them grow.

We also went through a lot on food chains, eating healthy, biomes, and plant parts.

While David was knee deep into plants, bugs, and body parts, Ethan was working through his Light and Matter studies. We pulled out the periscope that David made two years ago and fixed it up. We also got as a gift a fun kit that helped out with some of the concepts.

ScienceWiz Light Experiment Kit

David moved on to an Astronomy unit and made a nifty model of the solar system.

It only cost $10.00 at our local craft supply store. He typed up some short reports that he did on each planet and added them to the model. We're thinking about entering it in the State Fair art competition this summer. I also put up some fun solar system window clingers. All three kiddos have enjoyed looking at them. I read a really thought provoking excerpt from The Witness of the Stars by E.W. Bullinger. It outlined the original meaning of the zodiac - the Gospel written in the stars. Definitely worth a read! (There's a short excerpt in All Through the Ages: History Through Literature Guide by Christine Miller...it's one of my most recommended resources.)

The kids also had some fun with our National Geographic Star Planetarium.

Ethan then moved into the Early Civilizations unit (which we're still working on currently). We've had a chance to refine some of the activities I did with David in his first year to make them a bit better. I have yet to figure out a good way to make a wax sealing ring. Any ideas? Oven baked clay doesn't work. The wax sticks to it.

The oil lamp was much easier with oven baked clay.

We did a repeat with the little Phoenician boats.

Ethan tried a new Egyptian craft. He made a makeup box out of cardboard. He did a fabulous job of painting it.

We tried our hand at mummification at this BBC site and made another shaduf.

Our first year, we tried making ancient coins out of cardboard. This year, using oven baked clay, they looked much more realistic.

Something to try for next time: Make a ziggurat out of sugar cubes and sprinkle brown sugar over the top.

Then we went for the big-time and ordered a beautiful Tabernacle model kit from The Tabernacle Place. They have a step-by-step tutorial on how to paint it for better details. I printed off the free Sunday School lessons from the site and we learned a ton. It required a lot of adult supervision and help, but was definitely worth the time we put into it. I was having a really hard time with the paper model included in our curriculum. It was pretty flimsy and, after all the work put into it, was sort of disappointing.

After David finished the Astronomy unit, he moved into the Mediterranean Region and is revisiting a lot of what we learned in the Early Civilization unit. He's studying a lot of Israeli history. It has worked out wonderfully. Both boys are working together on some projects while David has a chance to look more deeply into some of the meaning. They both worked on the Tabernacle and we had a Middle Eastern/Mediterranean feast that fit into both units. I'm hoping we can all work together on some timelines as well.

God works in such wonderful ways. As I've been home schooling, things have fallen into place so beautifully. They are not things that I could've orchestrated so well. As David came up on the close of his Astronomy unit, I realized that we would be looking at Israel next. We happen to have a very close friend who is a Messianic Jew. She is quite versed in the Jewish culture and their holidays, feasts, and festivals. I asked her to look through the unit prior to our starting it. As the time approached, she pointed out that Passover and Easter were also approaching. The first section of the unit covers Jewish holidays. One of the first things that the unit study suggests is to have a Passover meal - a Seder. The chapel that we attend asked my friend to put together a Seder, but because there wasn't enough interest from the general population, she ended up doing it for our Bible study group instead.

The timing was perfect. Our two boys and another family of girls learned the Ma Nishtana (four questions) in Hebrew to sing for the meal ceremony. We found an mp3 recording online that helped us learn the proper pronounciation. I heard them wandering around the house singing it for weeks. It was a beautiful and eye-opening experience. I'll add photos and possibly a video when I get them uploaded.

David is currently working on making a miniature succoth with the hopes that it can be used for his army men in the future.

We also started a dreidel, but I can't find the drill, so it'll have to wait a few more days. I'm hoping I can find the time to try out a recipe for Potato Latkes and put together the inexpensive 'potato' menorah over the weekend. Next week we move on to Northern Africa!

Year Two

We spent the majority of our second year working
on a Greece and Rome unit study. It was pretty spread out through the year, as I put more emphasis on the math, reading, and writing studies. But, we did get a lot out of it. We took a few field trips.

Once again, living in Turkey came in very handy as we were able to find great places to get some hands on learning.




Our favorite local spot, Anavarza castle, provided a lot of great opportunites to include a personal lesson in using a slingshot, a walk through a real victory gate, several aqueducts, and Roman baths
that we could jump into and touch.

The boys enjoyed searching for hidden treasure. At the base of the mountain is an ancient city that dates back to Roman rule. There are still coins from the many eras that followed buried under the dirt. Just walking around, we found several fun items of interest.





The treck up to the castle was definitely a long one, but well worth it. From the top, we could see all the ancient buildings, roads, and even an amphitheater still half buried on the hillside.


Walking through each piece of this ancient city made me seriously wonder what it would have been like to live in those days. The terrain was almost unbearable to walk on let alone to farm in. We were shown the remains of a great arena and the spot carved out of the hillside where the ruler of the time would have sat to watch over the games. It was all there. All the things we read about but don't ever get to see with our own eyes.

During Christmas time, I was in charge of putting together something for the kids at church to do. We've all seen the traditional Christmas plays that have the manger scene, sheep, angels, and all the trappings. Very cute, but I decided to go with a different idea.

I had ordered some books through Voice of the Martyrs, and thought that one of them looked like a fun idea for a Christmas play. It's called The Story of Saint Nicholas of Myra: More than Reindeer and a Red Suit and is part of the Holiday Heroes Collection.

I used this book to write a play about who St. Nicholas really was and how he lived out his faith in a radical way. Of course, the costumes were a whole different ball of wax. But, with a little creativity and some will power, we made it work. I made David try on one of the Roman guard costumes to make sure it would work and look somewhat believable. It just happened to fit in with our home school curriculum and timing. Weird how stuff like that falls in our laps at the right time!

We also attempted a Roman feast, wearing togas and other traditional garb. It was a strange meal when we first looked at the recipe, but everyone really enjoyed it.

Once again, we used the Evan-Moor History Pockets book to supplement some arts and other more hands on things. Another book I found that was fun to use was Hands-On Heritage: Ancient Greece Activity Book.

I also found some of these other books that look helpful and quite stimulating:

History of Civilization Series by Milliken Publishing Co.

Ancient Civilizations by Instructional Fair, Inc.

ISBN 1-56822-060-X

My Book of Mazes: Around the World by Kumon Publishing

Draw and Write Through History: Greece and Rome

David made some laurel wreath crowns for us to wear. They didn't stay on well, so they worked only for pictures.






The kids were a bit eager to get out of costume after this whole event. They were pieced together and pinned in some strange places. They were good sports about it, though. It was the waiting for dinner to be ready that made it so hard to bear, I think.

We got a lot of good photos out of the deal. They were so good about posing for us!! Morgan's little dress was the cutest part. She modeled and posed like she was on a runway! I had fun doing up her hair with ribbons and she looked like such the little Roman queen.

My costume didn't turn out nearly as wonderfully as hers. We really just dug through the fabric box in the closet and put together whatever we could find. Somehow, there was enough for everyone. I'm purposely leaving out the photos of me. They're not the slightest bit cute.








We used the Crafts from the Past series again for this unit. We're craft freaks, what can I say? Our model Trojan Horse turned out beautifully. It was a little time consuming, but makes kind of a nice little decoration for the house.

The only other unit we did for science and history was a unit on weather. It was another fun one, full of hands on things to do.

We made a lot of weather instruments.

A wind vane

A thermometer

A barometer


We also did some charting of the weather and learning on how different aspects of weather behave.

A cheap little instrument that we got as a gift was this little Tornado Tube. The kids in the neighborhood all wanted to try it out and see how it worked.

Year two came to a close and we prepared to bring our middle child into the official home school mix. We also prepared to move back to the US and looked through all the regulations for our new home state. It didn't seem possible that we had just put away two whole years of home schooling. Looking back, it was whirlwind tour. (pun intended)