The younger kids just got done studying King Tut. Here are some pictures my 8 year old and 7 year old drew using a lesson I found on the Art Projects For Kids blog. You can see they added their own embellishments. While I have tried to make sure that all my children learn to draw, my 7 year old has shown a lot of natural talent in this area. 

King Tut drawn by 8 3/4 year old boy

King Tut drawn by 7 1/2 year old boy

We also watched some YouTube videos on King Tut. While we were there I stumbled across a two part series on mumification that I found facinating. In order to test the accuracy of the report Herodotus wrote on the mumification process, modern scientists did their own mumification of a human body by following his directions. It is pretty graffic and the kids chose not to watch, but it's really educational if you can stomach it.

If you'd like a free Tutankhamen notebook or coloring page, you can find them in the files section of the Lilliput Station Yahoo Group. And for more ideas for teaching your children ancient history, visit my Ancient History Lessons page on Squidoo.

When my older children first studied the Sumerians years back, I made tablets out of clay and let them decorate them with triangle shaped wedges. Later on, when we were studying fossils, I was inspired to let them make their own fossils by pressing objects into left over gingerbread cookie dough to make an impression before baking. We then dusted the "fossils" with powdered sugar so they showed up better.

Thus, we come to sugar cookie cuneiform. I really like projects you can eat, because the kids still get to have fun, I don't have to store a bunch of junk precious treasures, and no one is upset because I threw away the project they worked so hard on.

Writing In  "Cuneiform"

If you decide to do this project, be sure to take pictures before baking. The dough puffs up quite a bit and the writing doesn't show up very good after baking.

You can find more ideas like this on my Ancient History Lessons page on Squidoo.

Yipee! After years of waiting, Mystery of History 3 is finally here! Isn't it beautiful? I hope Mrs. Hobar doesn't mind me posting pictures of her baby on the web.

Speaking of babies, we have two new kids at our house!  Their names are Darby and Lazerus.  When our neighbor told us their mothers didn't want them and offered to pay us to raise them, we jumped at the opportunity. Our children are so excited to have some new little friends.  Oh, did I metion they are goat kids?  Hee, hee! Aren't they cute?

Here's a picture of my baby. She's a big help around the house.

And here is another little baby we found in the yard yesturday. I hope he learned to fly before our cat found him!

 This guy obviously thought he could fly. Good thing the rails stopped him.  

OK, enough silliness! I'm just so excited that my copy of the Mystery of History book came today!!! Yipee!

*If you are interested, you can see some sample lessons HERE.

No, I didn't feed it to the chickens.  My oldest son used it to make a Pueblo "village." Actually, it's just one house- he ran out of playdough.  This was one of the suggested activities in Amy Pak's New World Explorers. The directions call for clay, but we didn't have any and the playdough was getting a little stale anyway.

We've been using Amy Pak's New World Explorers for history. It is a wonderful, activity packed, lapbooking, and notebooking study. It is layed out to be finished in five weeks, but it's going to take us a little longer. After two weeks we have completed Day 3. Hmm!

So far we have colored maps, made flags, tied knots, and eaten sailor food. Here is a picture of our salthorse and hardtack:

The salthorse was very salty. The hardtack was very hard. We tried to sell the leftover hardtack at our yard sale, but had no takers. So the children decided they needed to finish it themselves. The leftover salthorse had to be thrown away.

Hardtack

3 1/2 c. whole wheat flour

1/2 c. rye flour

4 t. salt

2-2 1/4 c. water

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix dry ingredients. Gradually knead in enough water to make a dough. It should not stick to hands or rolling pin. Roll to 1/4 inch thick . Cut into squares and prick with a fork. Place on ungreased cookie sheets and bake 20-30 minutes. Do not allow them to burn on the bottom. remove from the oven an allow to cool slightly. Turn oven to 250 degrees and put trays back in the oven. Cook one or two hours or until the bisquits are light brown.  It should be "dry as the captain's humor and hard as a bosun's fist."

One of the upcoming activities is building a ship out of a large cardboard box. I had decided we would skip that one, but providentially our hot water heater sprug a leak last week. So, for $250 we got a brand new ship with a 50 gallon hot water heater thrown in free. ;o) Doesn't God have great timing?

UPDATE: May 2008

We actually finished this study a long time ago, but I wanted to post some pictures of the completed lapbook. This study was VERY activity intense. We normally do a lot of activities, but I found the pace a little hard to keep up. We will definately keep using this series, but I think we will spread them out a bit more and use them as a supplement to a regular history text rather than as a stand alone study.  These pictures are of my 9 year old daughter's lapbook.

I can't wait to start on our study of knights and castles this Fall. We will be using Mystery of History 2 to study the Middle Ages (I highly recommend this series!) so it will be a world tour, but most of the activities I have planned fall under the European category. Here are some links to worksheets and activities we will be using with the lessons. (I also have made some notebook & activity pages. They are for sale at Lilliput Station Adventures.)

Notebook Cover

Reading List

Lesson 1

coloring and activity pages

worksheet (Mod3)

activity pages

Lesson 2

coloring and activity pages

worksheet (Mod3)

Bible Character Worksheet

Braille alphabet

Lesson 3

coloring and activity pages

maps

Lesson 4

make lyre with metal coathanger and rubber bands. (This worked much better than using the cardboard template in the book because it didn't bend. Not as pretty, but less frustration. Maybe our cardboard was just too thin?)

website

website

Lesson 5

worksheet (Mod)

website with info to read

website

Lesson 6

activity pages

online book (chpt. 5 )

Lesson 7

Read Masada The Last Fortress by Gloria D. Miklowitz

pictures

more pictures and info

website

Lesson 8

website

website

Qumran photos

Lesson 9

Bible Coloring Pages

Bible Crafts

Lesson 1

Creation activity pages

Creation notebook pages

How to draw days of creation

worksheets (Mod1)

6 days timeline sample

website with printables

Lesson 2

notebook pages

God Makes Adam & Eve activity pages

The Garden of Eden activity pages

Adam & Eve are tempted activity pages

Cain & Abel activity pages

notebook pages

coloring page

 Lesson 3

Harp history & manufacture

Make kazoo here & here.

Bass flute coloring page

 Alto flute coloring page

Music making websites for kids

Iron history & manufacture

Iron bell found in lump of coal

article on name of Tubal-Cain

 Lesson 4

notebook pages

Noah builds the ark activity pages

God sends a great flood activity pages

God's covenant activity pagesMosaic Rainbow

Use small squares of paper the colors of the rainbow. Draw a small arch on each child's paper. This will give them a guideline for the bottom color on the rainbow and they can keep adding the colors on. Then have them glue on the squares, one color at a time.

Rainbow Sandwich

Trim the crust from a slice of white bread. Spread with red jam. Top with another slice of trimmed bread. Spread with orange jam. Continue alternating bread and different colors of jam until you have as many layers as you desire. Slice into thin strips and serve lying flat so that the "rainbow" is visible.

Doves and Olive Branches Game

Make paper olive branches or leaves and hide them throughout the play area. Choose one child as Noah. The rest of the children are doves. Noah says "Fly away and bring me a branch." The children scatter to look for the branches. When they find one they return with the branches. Designate a new Noah who can hide the branches and repeat the game.

Jello Rainbow

 One small box each of red, blue, and yellow gelatin dessert mix

Three mixing bowls

Measuring cup

Water

Three spoons

Large, sealable, plastic bag

Masking tape

Follow directions on the boxes to make the gelatin mixes in separate bowls to the point where the gelatin is ready to chill. While chilling the mixtures for 45-50 minutes, stir each a few times with a clean spoon. When the gelatin is partially set, spoon each color into the plastic bag to make three separate stripes, with yellow in the middle. Smooth all the air out of the bag, then seal it. Tape over the seal. Squish neighboring colors of gelatin together. What new colors appear? Where do they appear? Which color of the rainbow is missing? Why?

 Lesson 5

Properties of Ice Experiments

 Edible Glacier

6 oz. package of blueberry flavored gelatin

1 box of Oreo Cookie Crumbs

1 carton of Cool Whip

9" x 13" pan

Stove, refrigeratorLesson 6

Make the blueberry flavored gelatin following package directions. Pour into the 9" x 13" pan. Put in refrigerator until solid. Mix ½ of the box of Oreo Cookie Crumbs with the Cool Whip and spread over the set gelatin. The blueberry flavored gelatin is the icy blue center of the glacier. The Oreo Cookie and Cool Whip mix is the silty snow on top. Glaciers are made up of fallen snow that, over many years, compresses into large, thickened ice masses. Glaciers form when snow remains in one location long enough to transform into ice. What makes glaciers unique is their ability to move. Due to sheer mass, glaciers flow like very slow rivers.

Download a dinosaur

Cryptozoology website

 Lesson 7

Sumeria

cuneiform activity

cuneiform numbers

map

coloring page

ziggurat shape book

Lesson 8

notebook pages

Mesopotamia

the tower of Babel

another website

activity pages

 Lesson 9

online book (in verse)

 Lesson 10

Stonehenge face mystery (interesting short article)

coloring page

 Lesson 11

Early Egyptians Unit

Did you know that people used to grind up mummies and use them as medicine? Ugh! Today, as part of our study of ancient Egypt, we mummified an apple/orange pharaoh and the kids were gobbling down the orange "innards" as we scooped them out. Personally, I think that's taking the analogy a little too far, don't you?

This is our second week in Egypt and we are having so much fun. We have made snake-headed throwing sticks from wooden spoons, played senet, had an Egyptian market, and started on our mummy. We also wrapped one of the kids up in t.p. so he looked like a mummy.

We will also be doing painting, learning to draw like an Egyptian, making Egyptian clothes and jewelry, making pyramids, and doing Egyptian math and studying Egyptian fractions. We are reading The Cat of Bubastes by G A Henty and many other good books. We will also be reading some books on modern Egypt and studying about the Coptic church. If I am feeling brave, we may even make rhubarb papyrus. We plan to do an Egyptian feast at the end.

                                                           
All these projects are a lot of work, but the kids remember and enjoy them so much more than all the book work. And in the words of Edith Schaffer, "time can be made to have double value by recognizing that what is done today will be tomorrow's memory." and "Many times you are not choosing what to do with the two or three hours for the immediate results, but you are choosing a memory (or not to have that memory) for a lifetime." (from What Is A Family)

********************************************************************

After three weeks in Egypt, I decided it was time for us to move on. Today was spent finishing up projects and notebook pages. We made our bracelets, headbands and collars and put on "kohl" (black eye make-up) and our one black wig and posed for a group photo with some of the projects we've made. This will go in our school yearbook.

Our "feast" was a great success. We had fish and fowl (cornish game hens), both liberally seasoned with garlic and onions; lentils, also heavy on the onions; and wheat and millet flat bread spread with roast garlic. We also had cucumbers, melon, dates, figs, and grapes. And (root) beer to drink.  Our breath was something to fear, but it all tasted delicious. An old Keith Green song kept running through my mind . . . "eating leeks and onions by the Nile. Oh, what breath! We're dining out in style . . ."

links

website

more project ideas

lessons and printables

coloring pages

Great Pyramid papercraft

Sphinx papercraft

Lesson 12

pictures

website

Minoan pottery lesson

printable labyrinth

Minotaur coloring page

Lesson 13

notebook pages

activity pages

coloring pages

Lesson 14

notebook pages

activity pages

lentil soup recipe

Esau's fuzzy fruit arms recipe

Lesson 15

activity pages

craft ideas

paper doll

Lesson 16

Hammurabi's Code Says game