This week we dived into pyramids and mummies! We’d already covered a lot of information about mummies though our mythology reading – it’s hard to talk about Ancient Egypt without talking about mummies! Our read aloud at the beginning of the week focused on pyramids, but we talked a lot about both areas.
Funball has worked through most of the introductory squares and cubes work, finishing the decanomial and learning notation, but we finished all that up over a month ago. Building pyramids provided the perfect review, notating the number of cubes in each layer, writing out and calculating the equation. Daisy counted the cubes, worked on her fine motor skills, and as we got closer to the top she was able to skip count the rows.
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Funball used a writing assessment printable (which we did not use as an “assessment”) to work on some reading comprehension, analysis, and to write up a piece about the mummification process. Daisy announced that she wanted to write like her sister, so I helped her talk through the steps she knew of the mummification process. She came up with three and wrote a great little how to piece!
One afternoon we did a little pyramid related geometry. Funball knew this was coming, and was very excited…pyramid (and other geometric solids) building with marshmallows and toothpicks! I used a free printable from math salamanders which I cut into individual cards. We first all made the pyramids, then picked cards and all made different shapes. This was fairly low key, not a formal lesson, so we talked about the shapes we saw and the number of faces and vertices, but nothing more. It was fun, yummy…and sticky too.
Our largest project of the week was making sarcophagus boxes! I’ve got great printable and Cricut versions coming soon. Last week I was looking for some shiny wrapping paper in some very old sample books, and I discovered there was a sample of some Ancient Egyptian paper! Score! We decorated our boxes. We also used gauze from the dollar store to wrap the model magic bodies we made last week, adding in sequins as amulets and spraying with perfume. Funball also decided to pull out her cardboard stash and create a pyramid and even a sanctuary to go around the sarcophagus!
Over the week we watched and read Pyramid, by David Macaulay. Even though the video was poor quality on YouTube it was still well worth the watch. We also read If You Were a Kid Building a Pyramid. We also read Mummy Cat and Cat Mummies. We’d previously read and enjoyed Mummies Made in Egypt, and looked at a few different books for sarcophagus inspiration. We also spent another morning in the grounds of our local Egyptian museum. We have one more week to go. I think I’ll be a little sad to be done!
You can see our unit plan, and link to other weeks to see what we got up to here: Ancient Egypt Unit Study: The Plan, or check out my Ancient Egypt Pinterest Board.
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