Ancient Egypt, Mummies, & Pyramids

Well we've moved from dinosaurs, knights, and castles to ancient Egypt. I wasn't sure how Babycake would do with learning about mummies. So I decided to start our hands-on learning with some fun.

The other week we had a lot of fun excavating a dinosaur, so I went ahead and got more excavation kits that went with our ancient Egypt theme. This was again a great hit. Our first excavation was on a pyramid and the second was a mummy case. 

Again I tried to make a point that we were like explorers looking for treasure. We were like archaeologists excavating ancient pyramids hoping to find something new to learn about. Babycake thought it was great pretending to be these people. I doubt she could tell you what archaeologists and excavating means. 

The jewel that was discovered in our pyramid was later displayed on Babycake's Egyptian necklace we created. Sadly her bird that was excavated from the mummy case was "lost" before also being added to the masterpiece of jewelry. 

                                                                               

  From the books we've read, Egyptians had a good view of death and after life. The funeral procession and burial of the mummy (dead person) in the tombs or pyramids were both fascinating and a bit unnerving for Babycake.

Since she started making it clear she didn't want any of us in the family to die (a perfectly understandable statement when faced with death) I tried to quickly turn our lessons and discussions from death, to the lives of Egyptians and what they did and built.

For example, many Egyptians were farmers which was amazing since most of Egypt is desert, but thanks to the flood seasons of the Nile the soil of the banks were rich and plentiful. It was during the off seasons that the farmers would assist building the pyramids. (which were for anyone who could afford building one) The farmers were paid for their labor but also did this for spiritual security in the after life. I found this to be so interesting since I had been one of the many people who believed the pyramids were built by slaves for the pharaohs.










We had fun building pyramids out of legos. We made our pyramids to look like the step pyramids  we learned about in one of our books. (smooth sided pyramids were just not going to happen) Then of course Babycake remembered that the mummies were inside the pyramids, so we made some mummies out of paper people and strips of toilet paper. (sometimes I just can't fool miss smarty pants)

Diggin' more Dinosaurs!

Although we've moved past rereading Dinosaurs at Dawn for the 300th time, Babycake is still interested in anything dinosaur related she might come across. As I mentioned in my original post on dinosaurs, our children's museum has an AMAZING dinosaur exhibit. We recently went to the museum with the whole family and made sure to attend two events focused on dinosaurs. The first was "Dinosaurs Upclose." Here kids got to touch fossil casts of a Duckbill Dinosaur and learn about one of the Duckbill Dinos on exhibit. When it the Duckbill Dinosaur session was over Babycake enjoyed the dino dig site. A little later we went to the Tyrannosaurus Rex Talk. Again there was a speaker on the T-Rex and more fossils to touch while learning about the dinosaur and pretending to be a T-Rex.

 The next day we had our own dig for dinosaurs. Earlier in the week I'd found a great little excavation kit in the Target $1 section. Inside the clay dino skull was a dinosaur Babycake would get to dig out.

Babycake had a great time with this. We first started out simply using the little tools provided, but we quickly discovered we were getting no where, so we broke out the hammer. This was exciting (and terrifying).


We repeatedly discussed how we were explorers looking for a fossil. To find this treasure we needed to excavate. To excavate our fossil we needed to chip, scrape, and brush away the clay.

After chipping away at the clay Babycake exclaimed with so much excitement that she saw something. We paused from picking at the clay to brush off the exposed part of our little discovery.

We continued to chip away and soon a little green dinosaur fell out. Babycake was so excited and loved brushing off the dinosaur. Although she had a great time excavating her dinosaur I'm not sure if she will remember the terms we used. Oh well. It was fun.