Ancient China Afternoon

Rice is great if you are really hungry and you want to eat two thousand of something.

-Mitch Hedberg

Remember last month when we tried to mummify apple slices?

The results are in!

The apple preserved in vinegar didn't fare too bad.

The apple that was left in baking soda was a very blackened example of mummification.

The best preserved apple was the one that sat in salt for a month.

Then we got into learning about Ancient Egypt. We spent sometime building the Great wall of China and then decorated vases from the Ming dynasty. As I read about the vases, we learned that they are traditionally decorated with blue and white.

This was once everyone had a great deal of paint and colour on their vases. 

So we decided to discuss vases rather than do exact replicas of Ming vases!

We used rice paper to learn about rice and farming. Then we used soya sauce as ink to practice writing Chinese letters.

We gobbled up slices of persimmon and read folk tales from Ancient China.

Ancient Egypt Revisited

History is a kind of introduction to more interesting people than we can possibly meet in our restricted lives; let us not neglect the opportunity.-Dexter Perkins

We had some leftover Ancient Egypt things from my son's birthday a few weeks ago, so we called some friends over to finish our love affair with Ancient Egypt

we made beetle or scarab paintings

while we painted we read from several books about various aspects of Egyptian life in times gone by

the flicking part of water color paint was a huge hit

Ta-da!

Then we took coloured sand (because sand is a big hit in Egypt!) and using glue coloured in different parts of the map. Each child pick an icon off the map and we discussed it's significance

We played Ancient Egyptian doctor and offered the various cures of onion, honey and the not-to-be forgotten pig's teeth used for stomachaches

What's a day of Ancient Egypt without a feast of their favourite foods

We then mummifed several plastic animals in toilet paper

Played some Egyptian games

And because I'm stingy...ahem...frugal, we mummified apples instead of chicken breast.

We made hypotheses of the outcome of being kept in vinegar, salt and baking soda for a month. We shall see what happens in a month. Stay tuned.

We said goodbye to our friends and then  felt it necessary to prepare international cuisine.

Iranian Aash

Finnish Porkanna Laatikko

...and Egyptian mummies!