Monday, May 18, 2009

Night At The Museum History Unit - Ahkmenrah and Mummies for Dinner

We finished up our history unit today, based on the film Night At The Museum. Our final character was Ahkmenrah. He is a completely fictional character, but like Jedediah and Octavius, represents a time period, more than a specific person. So, we watched 5000 Years of Wonders: Ancient Egypt from Netflix, to familiarize ourselves with the time period.

The tombs and monuments of ancient Egypt are a series of puzzles buried in the sand. We found some puzzles of our own at www.show.me.uk/games/games.html, The Egyptian Mummy Game, and The Egyptian Tomb Adventure. These are fast paced, interactive, and informative. We even learned what those giant jackals in the movie are supposed to represent.


I pulled out the communion glasses, so the kids could try their hand at a little pyramid building (you could use any number of building toys instead of communion glasses). While they played, I put together crescent mummy dogs for dinner - www.pillsbury.com/Recipes/ShowRecipe.aspx?rid=16015.


All that is left now, is to hang our completed timeline, and add the pictures of the characters in their proper places in time. I printed out pictures from the movie, that I found online, to use for this. It's unknown what many of the actual people the characters from the movie are based on, looked like anyway, including Sacagawea, Christopher Columbus and Attila the Hun. So, I figured we'd stick with the film maker's version.

With that, our history unit will be complete, and just in time too. The sequel will be out this weekend. But, I think we'll wait for the DVD. We've had just about enough history for the present!

It's great to be a homeschooler.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is great... an additional idea is to have them select a character or animal from the movie and do a written and oral report. I do this for my alternative highschoolers and they love it!