Another favourite of mine from last year was our ‘Ancient Egyptian’ topic. Again, the children really engaged with it! We wrote instructions on how to mummify objects, basing it on what we learnt about mummifying tomatoes. (Great fun! We linked this with maths by weighing the tomatoes at various points throughout the mummification process and plotting these on a graph before setting up ‘The Tomb of the Damned Tomatoes’ in the corner of the room!)
An exciting moment during this topic was when we found a tomb in our classroom! Who knew? Of course, as we had been studying Carter and thinking about how historians use artifacts they find during archaeological digs, we were the perfect candidates to explore the tomb!
We carefully unsealed the entrance of the tomb and peered in with a torch!
Then, 2 by 2, we carefully explored the tomb, taking photographs of artefacts we found along the way.
We found lots of objects and photos that we carefully analysed and tried to decipher what they might have been used for but perhaps the most mysterious thing we found was a sarcophagus!
A team of four carefully removed the sarcophagus from the tomb so that we could examine it more carefully. It was sealed tight. Several children noticed that there were some hieroglyphs on the top of the sarcophagus. Luckily, we were experts in deciphering these so we worked out what it said …
HERE LIES …… JONATHAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh my goodness! The screams of delight as we dared dreamed that our long lost friend, Jonathan, who had not been seen since being chased away from the rainforest, could, in fact, be inside the tomb!
We carefully opened the sarcophagus up and HOORAY!!! Reunited at last!
What a fabulous moment!! Speculation soon began on what on earth Jonathan had been up to and how he managed to find himself in our tomb but mostly we were just relieved to have our good friend home!
The children wrote newspaper reports based on the exciting findings in our classroom!
Let us know what you think of our work!
The Anatomy of Teaching 