I’m doing a series called looking back, documenting learning the children and I did together prior to me blogging.  To be honest it’s more for my sake than anyone else’s.  Blogging is like having a scrap-book, but takes about a quarter of the time to stay up to date  

I was very excited to teach the children about hieroglyphs, especially because it meant lots of lovely hands on activities.  We started off with a couple of fiction books, just to whet their appetites:

 

I then did some read aloud and we discussed the type of activities we wanted to do:

 

I had traveled around Egypt as a teenager and picked up all sorts of goodies we could use – bookmarks, papyrus paper and the like.  We turned these into note pages, describing what hieroglyphs were:

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I had a lovely set of hieroglyph stamps which I let them play about with for a while on the understanding they had to read the booklet that came with it!

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I had them write out the Egyptian alphabet on a note page and we stuck on some instructions how to make our own papyrus.  Although I had some proper papyrus, we all thought this sounded too fun to pass up:

The ink was made from boiled berries and the paper from strips stained with brown dye (tea)

The ink was made from boiled berries and the paper from strips stained with brown dye (tea)

And finally I asked them to make a cartouche of their name on the real papyrus, using the stamps:

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We learnt about Champollion reading these two books:

 

I read them out loud, and the children read the second many times.  I think this book is one of the best historical picture books ever written and I highly recommend it!!  It is a true story book on Champollion’s life and I seriously can’t say enough good about it!  After ensuring the children fully understood the story, we did a key word outline together covering his life and I asked the children to write a three paragraph essay about him.  I gave as much or as little help as needed for each child:

C, who was about 8 at the time, wrote a great essay

C, who was about 8 at the time, wrote a great essay

We were so enjoying our time with the Ancient Egyptians!

Highhill Homeschool

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