And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Deuteronomy 6:6-9

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

How to Make a Mummy Out of a Baby Doll

Ancient Egypt is fascinating, and the kids are both loving the subject. We have written heiroglyphs and cuneiform, made sugar pyramids, and dug a model of the Nile River. But as we were reading about mummies, the kids just didn't seem as enthralled as I had thought they would be. So I quickly came up with this easy mummy experiment to draw them in. There are a lot of great mummy activities you can do with dead chickens and oranges. But if you have limited time, maybe this one will work for you!
Step One:
Prepare your doll. The red things you see on the doll are her organs. I cut simple shapes to represent the organs that would need to be used: circle for stomach, heart for heart, etc...

Step Two:
After announce to the kids that the Great Pharaoh had died I told them that as priests it was their job to prepare the body for the afterlife. We washed the body, removed all the organs except the heart, and washed them as well. Then we removed the heart and wrapped it in linen (toilet paper) and placed it back into the body. I even let the kids sprinkle targon on the body and organs to simulate the spices used in the embalming process.


Step Three:
After placing the remaining organs in yogurt cup canopic jars, we wrapped the pharaoh in strips of TP linen.

Step Four:
Prepare the Death Mask. I drew the basic shape and face but the kids did all the decorating.

Step Five:
Once the mummy was fully prepared we placed her in a magazine rack as her coffin (a shoebox would work well) and put the canopic jars around the tomb. Then we brought various items, plastic jewelry, toys, and other treasures to fill the tomb for the afterlife.

The kids really had a blast with this one and it was so easy. I seriously threw the whole project together with 20 minutes of prep. We kept our mummy around long enough to show Daddy and Grandparents and then unwrapped the doll and brushed of the taragon. I saved the death mask in our history notebook.

1 comment:

  1. That is beyond awesome! I'm glad ya'll are having so much fun. Wish my school was this enjoyable...;)

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