Let's Learn About Ancient Egypt!

Here are a few of our favorite books, activities, and online resources for learning about Ancient Egypt...

Online Resources

Explore Ancient Egypt! You've got to visit this site!! We took a virtual tour through the Great Pyramid, walked around the Sphinx, and visited other tombs and temples with 360 degree tours. It was excellent!! Thank you PBS!

Discover the world of Ancient Egypt playing our games! Explore the Egyptian landscape, join an exploration expedition through Egyptian tombs, dress like an Egyptian queen or craftsman, translate hieroglyphics, and run a temple store! My son loved these games from National Museums Scotland!!!

Our Favorite Books

• Ancient Egypt and Her Neighbors - This is a wonderful narrative living book for the whole family to enjoy together. It takes you to the heart of ancient civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Indus Valley, Ancient Babylon, China, Crete and more. I scheduled the chapters in with our history curriculum as they fit in, and I think it's a welcome addition to any ancient history program. It's intended to be used for children of all ages learning together. (I found this book through the SCM book list) 
• The Great Pyramid - This book is a story-like introduction to the Great Pyramid, filled with wonderful illustrations. The middle pages in the book even fold out and show the scene with thousands of workers in the midst of their huge building project. (I also found this book on the SCM book list.)
• Mummies Made in Egypt - I was looking for a good children's book about ancient Egyptian burial procedures that I could use at our co-op since I was going to be having the kids make mummies, sarcophaguses, and mummy masks so this was a perfect companion to those projects as it talked about and illustrated all of them. It had so much great information and pictures in it that I ended up buying it and having the other moms buy it as well. We also checked out the Reading Rainbow episode DVD of this book from our library. 
• Ancient Egypt - This was an absolutely wonderfully fun book to explore!!! It is visually phenomenal and full of all sorts of flaps, envelopes, mini-books, opening doors and foldouts and such. It's really unique and we will definitely be buying the other books in this series.  
• Seeker of Knowledge - There was a time in which Egyptians no longer knew how to read their own hieroglyphics. It completely cut them off from their past and many scholars tried in vain to break the code. This is a nice picture book about the man who finally deciphered the hieroglyphs.
• Boy of the Pyramids - We downloaded this audio book from Simply Charlotte Mason. It's recommended for grades 1-3, so my six-year old was on the young end of that but he loved it and listened to it two or three times!
• Mummies in the Morning - We found a Tree House book in which two kids go back in time to help an Egyptian queen. It's recommended for grades 1-4, and again my son loved it. 
• Tutankhamen's Gift - I got this picture book when we learned about King Tut. Although I don't recommend using it as your information source (it has some minor inaccuracies), we enjoyed it as a story book and it's a nice one to include younger siblings with.

Books we'll catch next time around (that look good but didn't make the cut this year):

• The Golden Goblet - a living book recommended by both SL (Sonlight) and SCM for grade 4 and up.
• Mara, Daughter of the Nile - another SL book recommendation

Just For Fun

• Ancient Egypt Scratch Book - My son loves scratch books so I got this for him and he loved it! Each page tells a little bit about something from Ancient Egypt then as a scratch page for him to draw it on. 
• Ancient Egypt Dot to Dot - We got this one purely for fun. Each page has a few paragraphs about some aspect of Ancient Egypt, and then a dot-to-dot picture to complete and color. 
• Ancient Egypt Toob - I used this as a stocking stuffer :) 

Hands-On Activities

I lead the hands-on History portion of our Co-Op, and most of our projects this year related to our study of Ancient Egypt. Check out our projects in my previous post, Hands-On-History: Ancient Egypt Project. 

Drawing

I also thought that Draw and Write Through History (Creation through Jonah, Volume 1) looked really neat, but I didn't end up getting it at this time because I think it's better suited for kids older than mine (age 6). It's definitely worth checking out. I'll get it next time we study this portion of history again at an older age.

Timelines

Timelines are a GREAT tool to use when learning history, and we love ours! See my post about our world history timeline: The Most Fabulous Timeline Notebook Ever and a simple bible timeline for children: Stick Figuring Through the Bible.