Teaching Egypt in Pictures

It is always fun starting a new unit. I especially love to teach Egypt because there are so many fun activities to do with it. There are also plenty of resources to use when teaching Egypt.   I hooked my students into the unit by passing around books about Egypt and having them write down what looked interesting to them.  We then looked at a map that compared the location of Egypt to Mesopotamia.  It was good for them to see how close the two civilizations were to each other.   To look into the geography of Egypt we spent some time thinking about the benefits of the Nile river. We made our own river in our interactive social studies notebooks.  After studying geography we took a closer look at the daily life of ancient Egyptians.  Here is the book we put together:

The next day we looked into what Egyptians wore.  We made our own necklaces with famous symbols as charms.  We talked about Egyptian art and the meaning of the symbols they used.

 

Yesterday we learned about schools in Egypt and their writing system.  One activity I did was a class venn diagram to compare ancient Egyptian schools to our school.  This was very easy for them to do but a good visual.  Next year I think I will have my students make a model or picture of what an ancient school would have looked like. 

They really enjoyed writing in hieroglyphics.  Everyone learned how hard it was to decipher messages since the hieroglyphics represented individual syllables.  If I have more time next year I would love for them to make scrolls to put their hieroglyphic message on.
 

For Halloween we talked about mummification and the Egyptian believe in afterlife.  They were all into this and wanted to know everything about how mummies were made.

I'm only half way through this unit so far.  I'm excited to talk about pyramids and the social class system next.  What activities do you use to teach ancient Egypt?

New Units

   I'm so thankful for a fresh new start next week.  Last week I finished up Mesopotamia and my elements of fiction unit.  I'm going to reteach a few concepts on Monday and Tuesday from those two units before moving on.  My standard class didn't do as well on the fiction test as I would have liked so  I'm going to spend some time working in small groups with what they missed on their tests.  I'm also going to summarize what we have learned so far about the ancient world before moving write into Egypt.  I have a great book that has a page with graphics for each important time in history.  I'm going to use that to create a timeline of the world so far.  Wednesday it will be time for Ancient Egypt and Poetry!




For anyone else who teaches ancient civilizations, you are welcome to use the LiveBinder I put together.  It has a tab with links to all kind of Ancient Egypt sites.

Social Studies

How will I begin teaching ancient Egypt?

I have a book of Ancient World Reader's Theatre Plays which I will start off with to grab their attention.  I then plan on showing the connection between Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt.  Before we start learning important vocabulary I'm going to pass around Egypt books and have students write down what they find interesting in the books and would want to learn more about.

How will I begin teaching poetry?

Before I even start teaching poetry I will start Monday and Tuesday by reading some fun poems to the class.  We will begin learning types of figurative language on Wednesday.  I plan on using a lot of music to begin with to draw the students into learning about poetry.  I found a couple of parody's I'm going to show and then have them create their own parody.

In other news...I'm hoping to get back to a normal routine next week myself.  I haven't been doing much exercising or anything for myself really in the past month with all I've had going on.  This weekend I haven't been feeling that great so I'm truly hoping that Monday morning will bring a fresh start and a renewed spirit.  I found this awesome song called "Breathing Air Again" that is about taking a breath of fresh air and trusting God to be with you through every step of the day.

Have a blessed week!