Hands-On History: Ancient Egypt

I lead the hands-on History portion of our Co-Op, so I thought I'd share the projects we did this year. This was our first year in Ancient History, and most of our projects this year related to our study of Ancient Egypt. Here's what we did...

We talked about how ancient people wove fabrics, and then the kids got to weave with a  loom. To do this, I propped a dowel rod between two chairs and tied strings to it, weighted at the bottom by washers. Then the kids wove it as you see here...

(I found this project idea here.)

They made mummies by wrapping little duct tape people with strips of linen, and gluing them in place with "resin." (I labeled our Elmer's glue as "resin" and no one was allowed to call it glue. They had to say "please pass the resin" not "please pass the glue" when they needed it.) Inside of the wrappings they also added "amulets" (rhinestones). For the sarcophaguses, we used this free printable pattern.

My Favorite Resources for Learning About Africa

We are studying Africa this year, and loving it! Here are a few of my favorite resources... 

 
Wonderful Books

A really neat book recommended from SCM (Simply Charlotte Mason) is Material World by Peter Menzel. It's a unique project from a talented photographer who traveled the world to put a face on the human condition from all around the planet. He features a statistically average family from a variety of countries all over the world, and includes large portraits of their family, home life, and all their material possessions. (See in the photo below the entirety of this family's earthly possessions.) It's eye-opening to see just how much and how little people have from different parts of the world, and interesting to get a glance into their daily life. We'll be using this book for the African families it features this year, and families from other countries in our geography studies in the years to come.

My Marvelous Map Box!!!!!

I love when something nice to look at doubles as a smart solution of some sort, like hidden storage or dual-purpose use. You know, like most everything at Ikea. Well, today I'm going to show you what I consider the most exciting addition to our home school room that I can possibly think of.

Drum roll please................

I present to you, our window cornice....

Oh but wait, you haven't seen the best part!!

This isn't an ordinary window treatment my friends..... for inside this cheery yellow chevron covered box you'll find THIS.....

Only the BEST set of pull-down maps EVER made! (Notice my enthusiastic map pointers!)

My Printable Passport! (A free geography printable!)

I've been working on getting everything planned, made, and printed for school next year so that when our baby's born I'll be truly "off" for the summer (well, as "off duty" as any mother ever is) and in the Fall I'll already have everything we need for home schooling sitting on the shelf waiting for me to just pick up and start using. One of the things I made is a printable passport, which we'll start using next year along with our Geography studies.