Ancient Egypt

Subject Outline :

Books – Fiction

Egyptology is a great resource.
See my review here
.
.
.
.
.

Books - Activity and Reference

Pyramids!: 50 Hands-on Activities to Experience Ancient Egypt. This looked good but to be honest, we didn’t use it much. There is almost too much information in it.
Make this Egyptian Mummy. This was good value for money. The mummy case was a bit fiddly to cut out, but interesting to make.
100 things about Ancient Egypt. I found this surprisingly useful! I don’t usually like 100 fact type books, but this one is divided into sensible sections with good illustrations. I think we used this book the most when compiling our lapbooks.
Ancient Egypt Sticker Book. Lots of stickers! We used them in our lapbook.
Tutankhamun: Ultimate Activity Book From the British Museum. A fun book that includes a push-out and glue model of Tutankhamun’s tomb, a card game and instructions for making your own egyptian jewellery and tunic. Its hieroglyphs page includes some full words as well as the alphabet. We found the tomb fiddly to make (with poor instructions) but thought it was a good addition to our resources. No American link (sorry!) as I can’t find it on Amazon.com.
See-Through Mummies. I didnt buy this one but I saw it in a museum shop. It looked fun, with lots of details about mummification and Egyptian beliefs.
Cleopatra: Queen of Dreams . Useful short book about Cleopatra. I am fairly sure this came in a set from the Book People called ‘Whats their story’, so it may be worth checking there.

Activities

Ancient Egypt Lapbook Pack. Downloadable pack from Homeschool Estore. This is the one we used, and it was very comprehensive. See my post on lapbooking here.
How to Mummify a Barbie
Making a pyramid
Make a Pharoah mask
Make an Egyptian costume
Instructions for making Papyrus from Rhubarb (scroll down to bottom of page). This comes from the Egypt copy of Dig Magazine. There is a theme pack on Ancient Egypt available. Discover Magazine also have an Egypt copy, and themed units.
Life in Ancient Egypt Dover Colouring book.

Board Games

The Egyptians played various board games, a few of which can still be played today.

Senet. There is a board and pieces included in the Egyptology book, and a instructions for a simplified version in the Pyramid! book. There are diagrams of the board, and instructions for playing the game here.
Hounds and Jackals. Each player races his team of pieces (hound- and jackal-headed sticks, respectively) on his side of the race track, which includes a couple of ladder/snake shortcuts. It is very similar to snakes and ladders (which is what I substituted!!)
Ra Boardgame from Uberplay I havent seen this so not sure how good it is, but there are some reviews on boardgamegeek.

PC Games

Age of Mythology by Microsoft (Free Trial Download). Do check this game out before you let your children play it, but mine enjoyed playing it in a non-violent way. It was this game that gave them their love of mythology, and inspired our projects on Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece.

Useful links

World of Adventure Curriculum outline for Ancient Egypt – contains a useful list of areas to cover.
Clipart site. Look under both Art and Countries for Egyptian clipart.
Internet History Sourcebook.
Open Learn Egyptian Mathematics
Open Learn Introduction to the classical world

Video and Film

Discovery Channel have some video-clips here and here
The BBC often screen Egyptian shows in their schools programs. Check out primary history and secondary history for their timetable.

Language

Recipes