Story of the World - The Egyptians

In our Story of the World, we are studying the early Egyptians. It has been a very exciting study so far. To think about the building of the pyramids and the overall complexity of the Egyptian culture is amazing. Take for instance their architecture...they built these HUGE pyramids without any of the equipment that we use today.  Of course, it took a lot more time and human effort to build these great wonders, but their tools, while much more primitive than ours today, accomplished these pyramids with intricate tunnels equip with "traps" to try to protect the Pharaoh's stash.

One of the activities that we did this week was the carving of an amulet.  We carved the scarab beetle, kehper,which was a sacred symbol to the Egyptian people.  You can read more about the myth of the scarab beetle here.  We also read a book from the library entitled The Scarab's Secret by Nick Would. (Find the Book here)

For our activity, we took a bar of white soap and first drew the picture of a scarab on the top.  The pencil did not actually leave a pencil marked drawing, rather it left an indented path.  We then used a steak knife to carve around the beetle to make is stand out on the top half of the soap.  Tip:  We used the cheap Jergens soap.  It worked really well because it was soft enough to carve yet firm enough to hold up to the carving.


Here are our results: