CtG Week 5 - mummified Barbies, make your own maze, and pyramids

Here are a few highlights from our week...

Art

Art actually went ok this week. My kids absolutely loved making the maze in lesson #84. They started out with the ruler, then decided it was taking too long and they just drew the remainder without it. My daughter kept hers very simple with just a few obstacles. My son, however, REALLY got into his and turned it into more of a video game. I was actually surprised he spent SO much time drawing. He put black holes that would transport you to another area of the maze, smiley faces you had to collect in order to get into Pharaoh's chamber, as well as unique obstacles. The kids even printed a few out to bring to their friends.   

Bible
The kids already know the books of the Bible, so we just reviewed all of them and mainly focused on learning our AWANA Bible verses this week. The kids had some rather large ones to memorize this week.

We are moving at a great pace in The Tanglewoods' Secret. I think we are either right on schedule or just 1 chapter ahead. Did I mention we are all really liking this story?


History

We learned more about pyramids. The largest pyramid was King Khufu's pyramid in Giza.
The kids then made their own paper pyramids.

Brown-eyed girl turned hers into a necklace.

They also constructed a pyramid made out of Legos.

Notice the smaller pyramids and the make-shift sarcophagus? They came up with this all on their own :-D

Science

The kiddos mummified Barbie dolls on Monday. Scratch that...my brown-eyed girl mummified a Barbie doll and my blue-eyed boy mummified a skeleton. Apparently, a Barbie (even a man Barbie) was still too girly for him...LOL! 

We got this idea from a homeschool blog called Just Call me Jamin. Click on the link to read all about how to create your own mummies!

We tore linen cloth into strips. Then soaked them in mixture of 1 cup flour and 3 cups water. As you can tell by blue-eyed boy's face, it was kinda gross feeling.

We wrapped the bandages around and around the figures, then soaked them with more of the flour water mixture. Finally, we laid them in the sun to dry.

Here are the finished products. Quite crispy!

My daughter has since 'unembalmed' hers and added it in with the rest of her collection. She said it was much too pretty to leave all bandaged up. My son hung his from our carport. Not sure what I thought about that...or what other people think when they walk up and see it...lol!

I have to say though...they really learned a lot thru this process and they told their father all about the mummification process while we were eating dinner. A little gross, I have to admit, but they remembered the process quite well. This experiment was the last thing we did for the school day. We read all the required reading for Monday's CtG prior to this activity, watched a short 2.5 minute video from the Getty Museum on the mummification process (*warning* you might want to preview this. It doesn't show anything, but it gets just about as close as you can), and watched a 30 minute Reading Rainbow video called Mummies Made in Egypt.

 I also sang and danced for them to my own little rendition of the Reading Rainbow song. Hello?!? Who DOESN'T remember that song ;) They were quite amused and no, I won't do it again...LOL! Unless I feel like embarrassing them in front of their friends one day, then out come the exploding jazz hands!!! 

We wanted to mummify apples, but never really found the time to get the experiment done this week. If you'd like to try it, you can read more about it here at The Unlikely Homeschool.

This has been linked up over at 2 Ladybugs and a Lizard.