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 a Day in the Life of Ancient Egyptians! Read on to check out a fun filled day of learning, reading, crafts, and activities all on the amazing Daily Life!
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
Was the life of an Ancient Egyptian similar to ours? Did they have jobs and school? What did they eat? Did they play games? These are just a few of the questions we tackled on our ‘A Day in the Life’ day. 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!)!
- Ancient Egypt Daily Life by Ancient Egypt for Kids. There are also several links at the bottom to deep dive into other daily life aspects.
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:
*It’s worth noting, a study of Ancient Egypt almost always includes mention of mummies. If you’re little one is a bit squeamish, you may want to skip out on some or parts of the videos*
- A Day in the Life of an Egyptian Priest by National Museum Scotland
- A day in the life of an ancient Egyptian doctor – Elizabeth Cox by Ted Ed (4m)
- Daily Life In Ancient Egypt (3D Animated Documentary – Life Of An Egyptian) by New Historia (24m)
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!
Since the topic of the day was daily life, our snack of the day followed suit 🙂 We picked a few snack items (which were different from previous days).
- Egyptian Food by History for Kids
- Food by Ancient Egypt for Kids
- What Types of Vegetables Did the Ancient Egyptians Eat? by Classroom
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:
- Egyptian Amulets by History for Kids. This one is a web page that may be suited for older kids.
- Diary of an Egyptian Quest by Nicholas Harris. This one is filled with text and pictures on life in Ancient Egypt.
- Ancient Egypt Book of Facts This one actually came in a Dig Kit that we used for a previous day – Dig & Discover Ancient Egypt Kit. It had a few pages of daily life!
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, DAILY LIFE
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!
- If you could travel back in time to Ancient Egypt for only ONE day, what would you like to explore?
- If you could have any job as an Ancient Egyptian, what would it be and why?
- If you could travel back in time for Ancient Egypt, what ONE mystery would you like to uncover? Imagine you found the answer (no matter how fantastical it may seem), write down the story!
- Writing your story about your amulet on the papyrus that’s provided (or that you made!)
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:
GAMES
Ancient Egyptians may not have had the benefit of computers or video games, but they still knew how to have fun! We ended the day by playing a few games that would have been played by Ancient Egyptians!
- Play the Ancient Game of Mehen by National Museums Scotland
- Make and Play Your Own Senet Game by the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures – University of Chicago
- Ancient Egypt Entertainment and Games by Ducksters.
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!
