I picked this Ancient Egypt Ultimate Explorer kit up at a yard sale for $1. Inside there is a book, a king Tut poster, a game, a pop-up temple, a rolled-up panel to paint, and many other activities. I give the entire kit a thumbs up, because there are lots of fun things to do. (If you click on the picture with all the activities, you can see how detailed the pop-up temple is.) My children enjoyed playing the Senet game, which they saw in the video “The Ten Commandments.” The paper pieces fell over sometimes, which was irritating, so I would have preferred wooden pieces, which would have driven the price higher, I’m sure. One of my sons painted the panel from the Book of the Dead, the famous picture with the scale that weighs the heart against a feather. Coloring or painting something famous helps a child remember it, so that’s good, since it’s a part of history that my kids will always need to know.
Some of the activities look difficult to make, and I’m not going to bother. For example, you’re supposed to tear into tiny pieces some papers and make a papier mache mask. There are easier ways to make a mask, which I’ll show you on my website. I just remember papier mache being super messy and a lot of work, from when I made a battlefield for the Revolutionary War. Anyway, I’ll pass on that.
There were simple card stock pyramids to put together (which I might glue sandpaper to in order to give it a more authentic feel). There were also three rubber stamps. Since I already had a whole alphabet of hieroglyph rubber stamps, three cartouches were no big deal. But if you don’t have any stamps, these would probably be fun. On the back of the poster is a map of Egypt to color, more activities to do, and a recipe which I might use for our Egyptian feast that I plan to do at the end of my unit.
Tags: Ancient Egypt, history, Homeschooling
