Welcome to our “Ancient Egypt Week” – an at home camp filled with days of relaxed learning and fun activities all themed to awesome Ancient Egypt! For our first day, we talked about what they knew about Ancient Egypt and introduced some basic concepts all while crafting, decorating, reading, writing, and watching some fun videos..
Like most of our at home camp weeks, we kicked off the week by easing into the topic. We started off with setting up the camp area with some decorations! And, like all days, we added in some interesting books and some writing / storytelling prompts to keep them learning! Read on to check out the fun!
INTRO
Many children have seen images of pyramids or hieroglyphics. BUT they may not know how those came about, where they are, that those are an actual part of history, or the mythology and beliefs from that time period. Enter Ancient Egypt Week!
A great place to start would be to talk about where Ancient Egypt was – Take a look at some maps so the kids can visualize where Ancient Egypt was and find some of the major landmarks that they may be familiar with (Nile River, pyramids, Sphinx, etc)… This webpage: Ancient Egypt Maps Online from Ancient Egypt Online has a really nice map and other resources.
Speaking of resources, Ancient Egypt for Kids is also a great site with several links to pages with tons of information!
And if you just want some quick intro or facts, take a look at these:
- 10 Facts About Ancient Egypt from natgeokids.com with some downloads: Ancient Egypt Primary Resource
- Ancient Egypt by Britannica Kids
- Ancient Egypt for Kids by Ducksters
Once they’ve gotten the concept of what Ancient Egypt is, then it’s off to setting up the camp area – always a fun activity – and reading, writing, crafting, and experiments!
DECORATE THE CAMP AREA
Decorating the ‘Camp Area’ or the room / area of your house where you’ll have most of your activities is a great way to get the kids excited about the theme of the week! If they’re incredibly crafty and creative, having some extra and opened-ended crafts would be great to keep them engaged. Otherwise, a prepared activity would work well!
If you’ve got any pyramids or Ancient Egypt items, then bring them out to ‘enjoy’ Ancient Egypt Week!
For our camp area, we decorated the space with some hand made hieroglyphics. The concept is extremely simple – take some upcycled grocery bags (or brown kraft paper) and let the kids decorate by telling ‘stories’ using ONLY pictures. IF you want to get a bit more technically close to the material, you can also stick to actual hieroglyphics (Ancient Egypt Hieroglyphic Examples and Alphabet by Ducksters has an alphabet chart which comes in handy if you want to use actual hieroglyphics)!
WEEKLONG PROJECT
For our weeklong project, we continued on our upcycled wall projects by adding a story or phrase of something we learned – in hieroglyphics of course 🙂
WHAT TO WATCH
We find that mixing in a short video themed to our day is a great way to add some learning fun! We try to pick informative videos OR mix in a cartoon favorite (where they don’t even realize they’re learning). Here are some of the videos we picked from for the day:
*It’s worth noting, a study of Ancient Egypt almost always includes mention of mummies. If you’re little one is a bit squeamish, you may want to skip out on some or parts of the videos*
- Ancient Egypt for Kids | Learn the History of Ancient Egypt by Learn Bright (12m)
- Ancient Egypt for Kids by Homeschool Pop (7m)
- 14 Strange Ways of Life the Ancient Egyptians Practiced by Bright Side (9m)
- What Did Ancient Egypt Look Like? (Cinematic Animation) by New Historia (5m)
FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS
What’s more fun than taking a break and having a simple snack??? Including the snack in your theme of the day! We find that our kiddos are more than happy to eat the snacks they create especially when they can arrange them into fun shapes and scenes!
And what better way to dive into Ancient Egypt week than by eating what Ancient Egyptians ate (sort of ;)). According to Egyptian Food by History for Kids, Ancient Egyptians ate some pretty similar types of foods that we ate: meats, green vegetables, figs, etc… They also ate green peas, chickpeas, grapes, and plums (What Types of Vegetables Did the Ancient Egyptians Eat? By Classroom). So, we picked a few of those throughout the week 😉
READING
It’s no secret that reading is an important part of learning, which is why we pick out a handful of books that are fun and filled with some learning tidbits. For our older ones, we have them fill out some worksheets (or let them create some of their own comics) to describe what they read and/or learned! These are a few we picked from for the day:
- National Geographic – Ancient Egypt by Stephanie Warren Drimmer
- National Geographic Kids – Weird by True – Ancient Egypt by Sarah Wassner Flynn
WRITING & WRITING PROMPTS
Just like reading, writing is a great way to keep kids learning by both encouraging their creativity and thought process as well as helping them practice their motor skills and penmanship.
If you’ve got a little one, have them trace words related to the theme: HISTORY, ANCIENT, EGYPT
If you’ve got older children, have them write a sentence or two up to a page or two (depending on their age). Encourage them to be creative AND give reasons for why they made certain choices. This was our writing prompt of the day but definitely pick something your kiddo might be interested in writing about!
- If you could visit an Ancient Egypt landmark, which one would it be and why?
- Do you think it would be fun to live in Ancient Egypt?
- If you could travel back through time to ancient Egypt, what would you bring with you?
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you for checking out our at home learning fun article! If you enjoyed this post, please let us know what you think in the comments below and/or follow us on Pinterest
Also, if you haven’t already, check out some of our other Ancient Egypt Ideas or History Themed Weeks, as well as our DIY At Home Camps!
Happy Learning!
