A few weekends ago the husband and I knew we would be out in the city because Marli was graduating from her etiquette class so we decided to make a day of it and go on a home school field trip. We’ve been learning about Egypt in History so I thought a trip to the Art Museum would be the perfect place to visit, partly because they have a really cool Egyptian area full of mummies and artifacts and partly because the cold has started to really set in here in the Midwest and there are only a few really cool indoor places to explore. Luckily, since we live in St. Louis most of our larger attractions like the Zoo, Science Center, History Museum, and Art Museum are free which is a huge plus for us homeschoolers because we really take advantage and use them as resources all year round. The big kids had a blast looking around at all of the art but since we were there to learn about Egypt we spent most of our time in that area checking out all of the amazing artifacts.
We use Story of the World as our history curriculum and add pocket books, projects, books, trips, and crafts to create a really full and wonderful history experience. The Story of the World series reads more like a collection of stories and fables, great for reading aloud when the kids are younger and able to adapt and grow with them as they go through elementary and up into high school. We are currently reading a section on the Gods of Ancient Egypt and the death rituals of the Egyptians so naturally seeing mummies, death masks, and canopic jars were a perfect addition to our current unit.
Now that we’ve seen all of these beautiful artifacts up close and personal it’s going to be even more fun to work on the projects I have planned for this unit. We are making our very own canopic jars out of paper mache and Pringles cans, creating our own papyrus, and making our own cartouche necklaces, all of which I will share here in a giant Egypt Unit compilation post for those of you homeschoolers who are interested or need ideas! We have been having such a great time diving into this unit, it’s going to be hard to move on to Ancient China. Hopefully we will enjoy it just as much, and who knows…maybe we will come back to check out the Ancient Chinese artifacts! Until then enjoy these snaps from the rest of our trip.
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