Weights And Measures
The kids at school always love studying the Egyptians- especially all the stuff surrounding death. The bit where they pull your brain out through your nose** before you can be mummified, and that your heart is weighed against the feather of truth to see if you are worthy of the afterlife. [** I apologise if your child came home from school believing that they used a bent paperclip, cos that was what the Supply Teacher told them]
As our Kids' Club this year is all about Moses, we have a lot of Egyptian stuff going on. I've realised that my scales are very useful timesavers as I prepare and collate all the craft materials.
All the bottle tops had to be washed in the bath before Chris drilled them.
I needed to sort them into groups of approximately 300. I weighed 10, then 20 - and established that 300 bottle tops weigh around 1lb/450gm. It is much quicker to weigh them than count them individually.
I applied the same idea to the various cut-out shapes - and was very satisfied with the amount of time I saved.
Last summer, I spotted an idea for a craft on the internet which I thought I could modify.
We are going to make Grumpy Pharaohs using a wooden fork, wool, pipecleaners and coffee filters [most of supplies I had already in the Great Stash]
But it appears that Pixar have got there first with Forky in Toy Story 4 [I haven't seen it yet, so no spoilers please]
Oh well - the children who have seen the film will be used to the idea of a fork character. and we are using wooden, not plastic forks here, so that seems to be a win-win situation.
I always loved teaching the Egyptian unit to Y3. We finished the term with an Egyptian picnic, made our own hummus etc. One sweet girl dressed up...wound round in yards of Loo roll, she was a 'Mummy'!
ReplyDeleteYou put so much thought and effort into your preparations for the children's crafts! I am sure they are going to have a wonderful time creating their masterpieces!
ReplyDeleteI remember the hours of prep we used to do for Whizzbang, our church children's holiday club-we would be cutting and prepping for weeks! I was so sad when P, our new vicar stopped doing it though it did free up a week of holidays. Egyptian topics are always fun-I've never taught it though since I've never been in year 3 non-music!
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you said re having to be prepared in order to avoid plastic. It's ridiculous! The supermarkets robbed our high streets of the individual Greengrocers, bakers and butchers and have trapped us in a plastic prison. I watched the episode of War on Plastic where Tesco introduced Plastic Free fruit and veg but offered 2 types of tomatoes outside of plastic and 12 types IN plastic. It's just ridiculous that they are responsible for SO much of this problem.
P.S. I fully intend to write to M&S-did you have a direct link for how to email them at all? Otherwise, I'll just search for it!
ReplyDeleteI took a real letter in an envelope into the store. There is a "contact us" link on their website
DeleteWe have a few mummies at the Royal Ontario Museum - and after the dinosaurs the kids (even the really little ones) always want to see the mummies! They are always fascinated and ask all kinds of questions - and even though one of the mummies is exposed it doesn't seem to bother them.
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