More on Ancient Eygpt

We were learning about pyramids today.  I bought this Egyptian pyramid kit from National Geographic so that we could explore a pyramid for ourselves.  Not quite the same thing but a fun way to spend half an hour.

I picked this up at Barnes and Noble with my discount card.

My kids could not wait for me to read the instructions, they just dove right in. 

This is part of the mess that we made during our excavation.

They managed to work the top of the pyramid off and then the fun began.  They worked together to chip away the sand inside the pyramid, and they found their mummy.

Inside is our mummy.

He looks kind of cold to me.

After they removed the mummy, they discovered that there were canopic jars inside as well.  Canopic Jars were used by the ancient Egyptian during the rituals of mummification processes. These were used as containers in which to hold the internal organs of the deceased that was going to be mummified.  The jackal  jar contained the stomach, the baboon jar contained the lungs, the falcon jar contained the intestines, and the human jar contained the liver.  We read in another book that they threw the brain away because they did not know what it was for.

These are really pretty and well made.

 This was a fun project to work on, and it just helped them understand a little more about mummies, pyramids, and archaeology.

We also worked on Pyramid Power from our Evan-Moor Egypt pocket.  We made a mini book that described the process of building a pyramid.  It outlines the process that was used to build pyramids all those years ago in a way that is simple to understand. 

It was a great day in Ancient Egypt for us.