Ancient Egyptian School Projects
- Mud brick houses in Egypt have changed little since ancient times.willage in egypt image by SdoubleU from Fotolia.com
The ancient Egyptian empire lasted for well over 2000 years and its culture lingered for nearly another thousand. With such a vast time span, it's easy to find dozens of fun and educational projects for children to do for school. - The Egyptians eviscerated and dessicated bodies before making them into mummies. Modern mummy models are more easily created using dolls and long strips of cloth or by drying out small animals left over from biology class dissections. Small charms and trinkets placed between the layers of wrapping and pinned to the outside make excellent mummy amulets.
Long strips of medical bandages make fantastic mummy wrappings, but an easy and cheap replacement can be made using strips torn or cut from old T-shirts. Soak the strips in a mixture of equal amounts of flour and water just before wrapping and the cloth will stiffen in place on the mummy. - For a large group of children, creating a museum in your classroom can be fun. Projects created by each child or statuettes and models brought from home, or on loan from real museums and stores, can be displayed on pedestals made of shoe boxes, with labels generated by the children. After the museum is complete, invite other classes to come and see it at a cookies-and-milk reception.
- Look up the spelling of each person's name in Egyptian hieroglyphs, then put together name tags. Egyptians wrote their names in cartouches, long ovals enclosing all the characters. You can write hieroglyphs in the cartouche left to right or right to left, but make sure the animals in your symbols face the direction you start from.
Hieroglyphs are also good for more than just name tags. If you create a classroom museum, have labels in both English and hieroglyphs. Label common things around the room in hieroglyphs or give the children a treasure hunt based on clues written in hieroglyphs. - To engage the girls who may not be interested in mummy-making or other crafts, creating the Egyptian look on themselves and others may be an ideal project. Using images of real Egyptian art and statues, have the girls try to re-create the braided hairstyles and elaborately-painted eyes of a real lady of the Egyptian court.
Perfume can be an especially fun Egyptian project. Egyptian women used oil-based fragrances, but also used wax cones that resembled incense. These cones would be placed on top of the Egyptian's hair and left to melt over the course of an evening. While Egyptian cones were made of fat, you can achieve a similar effect by freezing about a tablespoon of water blended with lemon juice or a soft fragrance in a cone-shaped paper cup. If you prefer to be more authentic, use a teaspoon of melted Crisco blended with no more than ten drops of essential oils, less for strong fragrances. Pour the blend into the cone cup and freeze. The resultant cone of fragrant shortening will melt slowly when placed on top of the head. - If you simply must have a pyramid as part of your class project, build it from sugar cubes. They can be easily stuck together by moistening one side and pressing them together.
It sounds easy, but the pyramid project, done properly, may be the most difficult of all. Most pyramids were built to a fairly strict mathematical standard because too much weight on the bottom bricks caused the stones to collapse. All later pyramids had four sides and nearly all were built so that the sides slope in at about a 50 to 51 degree angle. Stick to that specification and have the students figure out why the angles were so specific.
