Welcome to our “Ancient Egypt Week” – an at home camp filled with days of relaxed learning and fun activities all themed to awesome Ancient Egypt! For this day, we turned our attention to the Mummies! Read on to check out a fun filled day of learning, reading, crafts, and activities all on the amazing Mummies!
A TYPICAL DAY
All kids are different and you can definitely vary your day with whatever works for you 🙂 Our relaxed & learning fun day kicks off with an introduction to the day’s theme. Then, we move onto videos and themed activities (reading, writing – or story telling – time, crafts, food crafts/snacks, and games or experiments). Feel free to pick and choose whatever works for you 🙂
INTRO
One can hardly think of Ancient Egypt without mummies coming to mind! But your little ones may not be as familiar with why the Ancient Egyptians made mummies (or how). These sites are great introductions with kid-friendly facts, images, and related content! They’re perfect for providing a brief intro for your little ones (or to gather up some knowledge as well!)!
*It’s worth noting, mummies and how they’re made may be a bit scary or strange to little ones. They have definitely gone through some cartoonish versions, but if you’re little one is a bit squeamish, you may want to skip out on some or parts of the day’s activities*
- Mummy by Britannica Kids
- Ancient Egyptian History for Kids – Mummies by Ducksters
- How to Make a Mummy by National Geographic Kids
WHAT TO WATCH
We find that mixing in a short video themed to our day is a great way to add some learning fun! We try to pick informative videos OR mix in a cartoon favorite (where they don’t even realize they’re learning). Below are some of the videos we picked from for the day:
- Ancient Egyptian Afterlife by Inspire Education (4m)
- Egyptian Tombs and Sarcophagus Lesson by Ancient and Medieval Adventures (10m)
- How Were Mummies Made? | COLOSSAL QUESTIONS by Colossal Cranium (4m)
- Pyramids & Mummies | Ancient Egypt 1 | #68 LET’S GO LIVE with Maddie and Greg by Maddie Moate (37m)
FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS
What’s more fun than taking a break and having a simple snack??? Including the snack in your theme of the day! We find that our kiddos are more than happy to eat the snacks they create especially when they can arrange them into fun shapes and scenes!
Depending on what you’re going to use for your STEM experiment (making a mummy), you can also take a fresh version for your snack. For our STEM activity, we started the process of making a mummified apple, so we snacked on fresh apples for the day 🙂
READING
It’s no secret that reading is an important part of learning, which is why we pick out a handful of books that are fun and filled with some learning tidbits. For our older ones, we have them fill out some worksheets (or let them create some of their own comics) to describe what they read and/or learned! These are a few we picked from for the day:
- A Child’s Introduction to Egyptology: The Mummies, Pyramids, Pharaohs, Gods, and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (A Child’s Introduction Series) by Heather Alexander. For this day, we only concentrated on the Mummies section.
- Mummies (Level 3 Penguin Young Readers) by Joyce Milton. This is a great book for kids who are learning to read. It’s level 3 so there are pictures on each page as well as larger text.
- Inside Out Egyptian Mummy by Lorraine Jean Hopping. This one is a pretty cool book that shows you the layers on each page.
- Peek Inside Cat Mummies With New X-ray Images by National Geographic. This one is a web page but an interesting read for older kids who may be interested in what’s inside a Cat Mummy!
WRITING & WRITING PROMPTS
Just like reading, writing is a great way to keep kids learning by both encouraging their creativity and thought process as well as helping them practice their motor skills and penmanship.
If you’ve got a little one, have them trace words related to the theme: HISTORY, ANCIENT, EGYPT, MUMMY
If you’ve got older children, have them write a sentence or two up to a page or two (depending on their age). Encourage them to be creative AND give reasons for why they made certain choices. This was our writing prompt of the day (and we offered up some examples as well) but definitely pick something your kiddo might be interested in writing about!
- Do you think mummies are scary or cool? Why?
- Have you ever seen a mummy in a museum? What did it look like? What did you think of it?
CREATE & CRAFT
If you’ve got a crafty little one, a simple craft is a great way to keep them interested in the topic. While their creative juices are flowing, you can also chat about what they’ve learned so far or ask them what else they’re excited about learning!
For our crafts of the day, we gave them a few options that would help them enhance their pretend play or add in some of what they learned.
There is NO shortage of mummy crafts out there, especially since mummies are all over the place during Halloween. If you’re close to the Halloween time frame for the day, you might be able to pick up some really cool mummy decorations or mummy pumpkin decorating kits. If not, you can always wrap some items with gauze, left over t-shirt/rag strips, or masking tape!
- Make It – Ancient Egyptian Sarcophagus by Everhart Museum
- Upcycled Tin Can Mummies
STEM & STEAM ACTIVITIES
While crafting and writing get their creativity and imagination flowing, we also like to add in an activity that gets them thinking along the lines of science, technology, engineering, or math! These engaging activities or experiments are a great way to keep them learning!
- Apple Mummification: DIY Science – Make a Mummified Apple
- Minding your Mummies: The Science of Mummification by Science Buddies
- Dig & Discover Ancient Egypt Kit. This is one of those dig kits where you find an object hidden inside. It is small but was one of the easier kits to go through. There’s also a book included, which is a great – add on to read through!
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you for checking out our at home learning fun article! If you enjoyed this post, please let us know what you think in the comments below and/or follow us on Pinterest
Also, if you haven’t already, check out some of our other Ancient Egypt Ideas or History Themed Weeks, as well as our DIY At Home Camps!
Happy Learning!
