We have enrolled Emanuel in the Little Passports series and one of our monthly mailings was EGYPT. We couldn’t just look at what came in the mail so it morphed into time to make a poster about this rather intriguing country! I hope our resources and findings are helpful!

BOOKS:

• Ten Little Mummies by Philip Yates HERE
• Skippyjon Jones in Mummy Trouble by Judy Schachner HERE
• A Look at Egypt by Helen Frost HERE
• How the Sphinx Got to the Museum by Jessie Hartland HERE
• Egypt ABCs by Sarah Heiman HERE
• You Wouldn’t Want to be Tutankhamen! by David Stewart HERE
• Ancient Egypt by Cynthia Klingel and Robert B. Noyed HERE
• Eyewitness Pyramid by James Putnam HERE
• Everything Ancient Egypt by Crispin Boyer HERE
• Eyewitness Ancient Egypt by George Hart HERE
• Ancient Egypt Beyond the Pyramids by Kathleen W. Deady HERE
• Egypt in Pictures by Jeffrey Zuehlke HERE
• Miriam and Her Brother Moses by Jean Marzollo HERE
• Ms. Frizzle’s Adventures Ancient Egypt by Joanna Cole HERE
• Who Built the Pyramid? by Meredith Hooper HERE
• Mummies in the Morning – a Magic TreeHouse mystery by Mary Pope Osborne HERE

HELPFUL WEBSITES:

• Virtual Reality 3D Tomb Tours HERE though we could not get it to run on our laptop. If someone could figure it out I would love a head up on how they did it!!!
• A series of the Eye of Ra images. I needed them for my part on one of mini books HERE thanks to Waktattoos.com
• Ducksters’ Egypt Map HERE, Odyssey’s map HERE

PRINTABLES

• A mini book with the current Egyptian flag from Activity Village HERE.
• Ancient Egypt wordsearch HERE (Activity Village)
• Ancient Egypt map colouring page HERE (Activity Village)
• Current flag colouring page HERE (Activity Village)
• Sphinx colouring page HERE (Activity Village)
• Pyramids colouring page HERE (Activity Village)
• Ancient Egyptian children colouring page HERE (Activity Village)
• Egypt colouring page on Education.com HERE
• List of Ancient Egypt worksheets on Education.com HERE

CRAFTS

• Egyptian Pyramid model papercraft with Education.com HERE
• Make a Mummy papercraft HERE (Education.com)

ANSWERING QUESTIONS

• Ancient Egyptian beards… why? With Musiem HERE
• All about Egyptian gold… Live Science’s article on clues to the origins of it HERE. A comparison between Egyptian and Roman gold HERE. The Gold of the Pharaohs by Softpedia HERE.
• All about the Sphinx… why is it a half person half lion? Mentormob’s article HERE.
• Toothbrushing in Ancient Egypt! Including the use of cosmetics on The Alchemy Web Site HERE. Wiki Answers’ take HERE.
• What do Egyptians do for fun? Ask.com’s answer HERE. ThinkQuest’s answer HERE

VIDEOS
First off, CrashCourse’s Ancient Egypt: Crash Course World History #4

The History of Ancient Egypt in 2 Minutes! Vsion 1.0 by Scott Powell, the History Guy

Ancient Egypt – The Mystery of the Sphinx by Plancheman100

Mystery of the Sphinx (this is part 1 you can find the rest by the same poster) by Pharaoh3000

  SUGGESTED CRAFTS (we didn’t make it to doing these as light caught up with us)

• Salt Dough Plaque (Activity Village) HERE
• Pharaoh’s Headdress (Activity Village) HERE
• Flail Craft (Activity Village) HERE
• Ankh Fuse Bead design (Activity Village) HERE

October 22-24

We are onto our next big countdown – HALLOWEEN! Where has the year gone??? First Halloween, then Thanksgiving (American) and then CHRISTMAS! I am so not ready! We started our day with a gift… Gammie has already started sending the Christmas presents to hide until THE DAY and included in the boxes have been a few extras… I think we opened a couple the week before. But this one was a request item… a tiny ring-tailed lemur. Only our VERY FAVOURITE of all the animals really. This one was a dog toy so Echo is totally enamoured with it… it SQUEAKS!

With our regular morning routine accomplished Nana, myself and the girls had a special errand to accomplish. The weather has of course changed over to fall and sandals are out. Both girls have grown and honestly Echo has never had a true pair of sneakers… so off we were to find some! Kohl’s had a 30% off coupon and Nana was on a mission. Two stores later and a worn out Echo and we were MORE than successful. Not only did we find adorable LIGHT UP shoes for each but we ALSO found coats for the cousins AND long sleeved MINECRAFT themed shirts for the boys! Add to that lunch at McDonald’s and our girly time was a total success!!! Thank you Nana!!! (Oh, did I mention… matching adorable 3 piece girly outfits for the ladies themselves!)

With milk

Matching!

Gavin actually requested a special mini project for himself – pictures, video and (my input) a short story about ring-tailed lemurs. We watched a National Geographic video.

And Globalzoo’s video simply titled The Ring-Tailed Lemur.

Our colouring page could be found on HonkingDonkey (what a name!!) HERE. I love it when they take initiative and WANT to do something a little unique and interesting to them personally.

We hit midweek with not too much drama. Special movie time though – Monsters Vs. Aliens.

And a science project with Daddy dealing with oil and water and why polar bears are not cold! Again spot the secondary parental teacher!!!

Well sort of out of screen

There was even time for some play time, chaotic and totally us!

BUT even more important… KEN TURNED 36!!! Since I am on a total spending freeze there was no present buying… so the kids and I wrote stories, drew pictures and yours truly wrote a letter for him which we made into a book. I do love handmade creations and the words in that book came from all of us to him with love.

Happy Birthday Ken!

After celebrating a very special birthday it was time to move onto a big completion… our Egypt unit made its way (finally) onto the poster. We worked together and did our very best to showcase our Ancient Egypt fun! Of course I have a reference blog entry that you can check out HERE.

We ended our day with making white paint footprints we will later make into ghostly images.

I am well pleased with our progress in almost everything! We have our ups and downs but if I can look  back and recount these positive moments I KNOW we are doing it right!!!!

October 19-21

What to do on a Saturday morning in fall with your cousins??? Play video games of course! We had a half a day with cousins and then a quiet ending to a quiet day.

On Sunday we of course had Sunday School but AFTER that Daddy and Baba built the boys a different bed to replace the bottom single bed. Now there are TWO uppers together and then the bottom bunk way underneath. Emanuel, how gets the bottom is in heaven. He says it is like having his own room!!!

Miss Echo had to make her fashion statement as well!

Monday meant back to schooling. The pattern of our weeks in this new year of school has become VERY comfortable. Lots of together opportunities.

Trinity and Emanuel worked on their own versions of healthy meals to start off their slow unit on the grocery store. Since we have not taken a true summer vacation we are slowing it down a bit right now. With a grocery unit to learn about, the twins and their Minnesota unit and our Little Passports Australia waiting in the wings there is no lacking of things to do, BUT it is fun to take some time to see things… do things… experience  things together that are not exactly ON the school plan… sometimes a step off the beaten path is how we find our gems. So I am pledging flexibility this year. More so than previous!

We also had a trip to check out… Andy and Darcy did a route in a semi that they clocked back to us state by state (and sent some postcards) via Facebook. So we not only tracked it, read about the states from our book Friends and Mates in 50 States but the twins wrote their own imaginary and wonderful stories about what COULD have happened on their trip.

I found a fun activity that uses a piece of orange paper, scissors and a story! You can do this fun and quick Halloween activity by clicking HERE.

Really it has been AMAZING. Ken has found a new interest in including himself in our routine. There is no better gift that he could give us than a willingness to be a part of our learning. It is moments like these that help me deal with the difficulties and embrace the future! Thank you so much Ken for coming back to our schooling and our routine!