Egypt Unit: Feast and Misc...

Egypt had so much to cover...  Here are some other things we did:

 We visited the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in DC to see lots of artifacts.  The mummified ox was a favorite.

 I thought this coffin was beautiful.  The girls also liked seeing lots of shabtis, since we had read so much about them.  Also, I can't find  the pictures, but the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk VA has an amazing Egyptian collection as well.  A gorgeous sarcophogus, cat and falcon statues, lots of other things.

We had our Egyptian feast.  Labor intensive, but some of the things were tasty.  We had mint limeade, falafel, cheese bread things, koshary, and kebabs.  B liked the seasoning on the meat even more than his favorite Stephen Raichlen rub recipe, which is high praise indeed.

Egypt Unit: Books...

I already wrote about some Egypt books on this post.  Here are some more.

We found the first Bill and Pete book at the library.  So cute!


This was another favorite:


One of our favorites:


This one was nice too.


This one is a Liberian story, but we have been talking about crocodiles while studying Egypt, so I will include it here.


Another good croc story.


This one was a bit weird, as many creation stories are, but the illustrations are pretty, and it had a pronunciation guide, so we found out we were saying the goddess Nut's name wrong...


This one was good.  Good to know the process behind how artifacts got from Egypt to museums.


This one is funny, and has a code for the girls to decipher.


This one is good if your kids enjoy some good gross pictures...

The girls read three chapter books.  I will let them write about them.






Miss M:  "It was about King Tut and he actually wore or was in his mom's death mask.  This book talks about Howard Carter and how he really wanted to go to Egypt.  Some people think there's a curse on King Tut's tomb because of Lord Carnarvon.  He was bitten by a mosquito very badly and he accidentally cut it when he was shaving.  That caused him to have a disease called pneumonia.  He died.  I do not think the curse is real."

For my personal reading, I started with this book, which I really like.

It's in the same vein as the Percy Jackson stories, in that the ancient gods have modern-day children.  The plot is much more to my liking however.  The main character is Isadora, a daughter of Isis.  It's really good, and I wish there were more!  There's not really any sex, but it has some romance and adult language (not swearing, at least not that I can remember).  I imagine I would advise it to about 15 year old girls.  She makes the Egyptian gods very real and rememberable.













I didn't have time to read these, but I would like to!




Here are some of the extra useful books we found:

This book is a font of info and cool projects about ancient Egypt.

Whenever we do a review of Egypt we will definitely check this out again.


Miss M got really into the gods and goddesses.  She liked this book.


This one has what I think are the most definitive stories.  The gods and goddesses are pretty confusing and illogical (by today's thought processes anyway), so I trusted this book to give solid info.

Egypt Unit: Movies...

Holy cow, there's a lot.  PBS, which I love, has a billion.  If you are a passport member, which of course I am, you get access to a lot of the older episodes, but many of them are available to everyone.  What they don't have, you can find on you tube if you look them up.

Nova (my favorite tv show ever):
     -Building Pharoah's Chariot
     -Riddle of the Sphinx

Secrets of the Dead:
     -Cleopatra's Lost Tomb
     -Ultimate Tut
     -The Silver Pharoah

Egypt's Treasure Guardians

Non pbs you have

YouTube:
     -Secrets of Ancient Egyptian Ships
     -TedEd- lots of shorts about ancient Egypt

Also Khan Academy has a whole course about Egypt here.  It has good videos and quizzes.

We also have the animated movies Joseph, King of Dreams and Prince of Egypt.

Egypt Unit: Hieroglyphics...

We finished our Pacific Isles unit, and I asked the girls "What next?"  They decided on Egypt.  I had to really search to find things about the South Pacific (that wasn't just only about Hawaii), but with Egypt I'm having the opposite problem!  So much to do...

I went to the libraries and got all the books, I did the pinterest thing, and I came up with a list of stuff the girls should be aware of.  Here it is:
     -The Nile
     -Cairo
     -Aswan
     -The Sahara
     -Suez Canal
     -story of Joseph
     -story of Moses
     -pharoahs
     -mummies
     -pyramids
     -papyrus
     -hieroglyphics
          -ankh
          -eye of Horus
     -sarcophogus
     -canopic jars
     -obelisk
     -senet
     -gods and goddesses
     -camels, hippos, and crocodiles

Some of these we will mention, some we will read about and a very few we will do pinteresty stuff about.  I was helped with this list by this page of definition cards, which will be good for a matching game too.

Luckily, I was introduced to the Good and Beautiful curriculum here.  Their first year history book here has an amazing section on ancient Egypt.  They have some really wonderful audio stories that we listened to, then did the corresponding lessons.  The lessons are just my style, meaning you open the book and read together, then there are some worksheets for the kids.  While they listened I gave them bowls of dates, dried figs, and dried apricots.  The book said melons and pomegranates too, but I didn't have any.

We read this book:


which, as you would expect from Tomie dePaola, is wonderful.  We also read the sequel, Bill and Pete to the Rescue, also good, although it takes place in New Orleans.  We need to find the first book, but it's not at our libraries...

This book was a really good overview of the country.  We made copies of the Egyptian flag out of scrap paper while looking at it.










Here is Miss A's:














And here is Miss M's:














We looked through these and talked about some of the photos.






Yesterday's Good and Beautiful (g&b hereafter) lesson had them read an article about hieroglyphics and the Rosetta Stone, then do a worksheet decoding the characters.  Today they came up with the idea to write on rocks, which we always have lying around in great supply, much to my husband's (and our pcs weight limit's) dismay...

Also, if you're looking to become fluent, we got this book from the lib:

Wow.  If I were teaching a doctorate course instead of 2nd and 4th grades, this would be great.  But again, it's fun to look at all the pretty pictures.  They would be good for tracing too.

We're supposed to make cartouches later, like these

from my pinterest board.  But... clay is messy, and they already did a hieroglyph craft, right?

Pacific Island Unit: Picture Books...

It wasn't as easy to find books at the libraries for this unit.  Here is what we came up with:


Good.  About a girl who has different ideas from her grandma.


Ok.  Takes place in Mexico, not Hawaii, but still relevant.  Pretty illustrations.


Good.  A dog and sailor wash up on Hawaii after a shipwreck.


Good, because it has a small section of big words on each page for reading to Miss R, then more info for the big girls to read.


Very good.  I totally want to go to Lei Day someday in my life.


Good.  Story showing lunar New Year in Hawaii.





This book is gold.  Not many illustrations, but real stories.


Good.  Nice photos of children, easy to read.

Pacific Islands Unit: Chapter Books...

Last fall, I discovered the fine art of bribery; at least as it relates to reading and forcing (I mean "encouraging") kids to do it.  The girls were at piano lessons, and their teacher's kids were watching a Harry Potter movie.  My girls wanted  to as well.  It struck me that I should make them read the books first, then be able to watch.  That worked like a charm.  Both Miss A (10), and Miss M (7), read through the first four books avidly.  I bought the movies, and they watched them.  So when they wanted to go see Moana, I thought "What could I make them read to earn a trip to the movie?"  It definitely wasn't as clear cut, but I came up with something that worked.


Here's the blurb: Inspired by Disney Animation Studios' latest film, Moana, this middle grade novel features characters and adventures based on the rich culture of Oceania. It includes original content in the form of mini folktales interspersed throughout the story of the film. Bonus temporary tattoos included!

My goodness, those tattoos.  I cannot tell you how much excitement those blasted tattoos caused.  They're still kind of on the girls' faces and arms.  
Anyway.  I thought we may as well make our next unit the Pacific Islands if we were going to do it properly.  So both big girls read that Moana book, and we went to the movie.  Which we loved by the way.  Even B has been humming the songs and of his own accord looking up stuff about the actors.  I thought it was amazing.  And here is an acrticle from Vanity Fair (not my usual reading, but I thought this was very cool) about how the movie makers used scholars and experts to be as authentic as possible.

Here are some other books I read, and the girls are in the process of reading:


This one is sad, of course.  Does Hawaii want to be a state?  We should give it back.




Classic Nancy.  I read this, the girls didn't.  They love to listen to Nancy Drew, but unfortunately our libraries only have a few on cd...


This was a sweet story, as American Girl usually are.




I'm reading this one now...


I'm reading this one.  It may be a little too much for small ones.  Cannibals and all...