Create Your Tailored Homeschool Ancient Egypt Unit Study Quickly and Easily

Ready to create an incredible and tailored ancient Egypt unit study for all ages in your homeschool? It doesn't have to be overwhelming. It can meet the learning interests of all of your kiddos without breaking the bank or trying to do "all the things." Let go of the notion that you have to cover all the nitty gritty details of ancient Egypt as that is impossible. It's a VAST subject beyond most of our understanding.

Let's get started!

Much of mainstream education is obsessed with grades, testing, and benchmarks to the detriment of the learners involved.

After many years of facilitating unit studies both in the classroon and online for my homeschool and school learners, I have come to the conclusion that it's always best to start with the learners interests first and create unit studies around their interests first.

No matter what style homeschooler or classroom teacher you are, the unit study creation steps can be fine-tuned and modified according to your particular homeschool interests and needs.

The idea of tackling a unit study like ancient Egypt can very quickly become overwhelming for homeschool and school educators. Ancient Egypt is a VASTLY extraordinary topic with many complexities.

Remember, go easy on yourself and your learners!

Focus on the JOYS of learning about ancient Egypt rather than racing through an obstacle course of content like its a gauntlet of information that you must cover as so many schools unfortunately are under pressure to do.

Consider letting go of the concern about learning everything about ancient Egypt chronologically, unless learners want that. It's fine to hyper focus on learner topics of interest.

Start with an Ancient Egypt Timeline Overview

You can even do a brief timeline overview of ancient Egypt giving your learners scope of imagination around what they really want to focus on and learn. Have a look at the brief ancient Egypt timeline infographic above. This bird's eye overview is a great place to start. It can be the launching pad you use to start gathering ancient Egypt book resources.

When I was a girl, I became fascinated by the boy king, Tut. I checked out books myself from the library and read through them without any adult coaxing me. Feeling the need to cram the entire history of Ancient Egypt into a unit study can very quickly become overwhelming to both the adults and the learners and crush learner interest.

Don't be afraid to focus on the ancient Egyptian subtopics that the children are MOST interested in and frontend those in your study. This will keep them engaged and excited to learn.

Humans learn best when they're learning something that they're keenly interested in or passionate about.

You and your kiddos want to feel a passionate zeal everyday that you explore ancient Egypt together. Instead of the usual "trudge" through academics, unit studies invite a sense of educational exploratory adventure, wonder and FUN!

I remember during my brick and mortar days, my learners and I used to share a mutual experience of learning joy and passionate zeal throughout our unit studies. I aim to pass that zeal onto you and your kiddos!

I officially invite you now to get my Unit Study Planner BUNDLE. This will help you easily plan your ancient Egypt unit study and any future unit studies.

Get NatureGlo's Unit Study Planner Template BUNDLE.

With NatureGlo's Unit Study Planner BUNDLE, you'll be able to plan your unit studies with greater ease, organization, and clarity helping you keep your kids learning going at an exciting and manageable pace.

Step #1 - Have an Ancient Egypt Unit Study Group Discussion with Books and Movies

Most children have been introduced to the idea of ancient Egypt either through watched documentaries, movies, playing video games, board games, toys, and or books.

As a powerful and effective preliminary preparation for your ancient Egypt unit study family or classroom discussion, take the children to the library and check out books and documentaries about Ancient Egypt.

Invite the children to skim through the books and jot down some notes with questions about ancient Egypt topics that interest them. Have them bring their list to the brainstorming meeting.

Next, you can all watch an interesting ancient Egypt movie or documentary together before your discussion.

Ancient Egypt Documentary List

1. Documentary - Discover the Secrets of Ancient Egypt | Engineering an Empire
2. Planet Egypt: Birth of an Empire (S1, E1)
3. Ancient Egypt for Kids
4. Homeschool Pop - Ancient Egypt for Kids
5. Free School - Exploring Egyptian Civilization for Kids

After the children have had the opportunity to look through the books and watch the movie, it will be much easier to have an open discussion with the children about what they would like to learn about ancient Egypt.

During the meeting, use NatureGlo's (that's me!) brainstorming template from the Unit Study Planner Bundle. Write down the children's ancient Egypt topic interests. Together you and the children can decide which topics to focus on. If the consensus (everyone voting on the same topic) making process becomes too hairy for you, you can take a majority vote on topics to decide what ancient Egypt sub-topic to start with. Alternatively, each child can focus on their chosen ancient Egypt topics of interest.

Ancient Egypt Projects

NatureGlo's eScience Great Pyramid of Giza Golden Ratio Lapbook templates are a great resource to add in with your ancient Egypt projects list, or, as a stand alone resource. This free resources is a sample from my larger unit study, Ancient Egypt Unit Plan: Great Pyramid of Giza Golden Ratio PowerPoint.

Learn more about NatureGlo's eScience FREE Golden Ratio and Great Pyramid of Giza Lapbook and Notebooking Templates.

Get the ancient Egypt printables below.

NatureGlo's Great Pyramid of Giza Golden Ratio Lapbook templates can also be used as interactive notebook templates for teachers. These templates are a fun way to either kick off a new Ancient Egypt pyramids project in partnership with an ancient Egypt unit, spruce up the unit mid-way or conclude the study. They're extremely versatile.

Homeschooler Teresa's Example Ancient Egypt Lapbook

One of my homeschool online learners, Teresa, created a beautiful example of NatureGlo's eScience Golden Ratio and the Great Pyramid of Egypt Lapbook templates.

Teresa joined me for my yearlong MathArt online course. When I made a request to my students for any photos of lapbooks they had completed, Teresa emailed me these photos to share.

Below are Teresa's well designed lapbook template examples.

Above you can see how Teresa cut out the interesting desert themed font to create the title for the first page of her lapbook.

See how she used the color version of the templates. There are also black and white version of the templates if your kiddos want to color them in.

Teresa created two different pages for the templates. You and your learners can create the lapbook as such, or, for use as an interactive notebook. The learners can arrange the templates any way they want.

Ancient Egypt Unit Study Book Suggestions List

In addition to whatever books your learners have already chosen from the library, here's a book list of some of my favorite books that you can either find at the library, on Amazon, or, as digital versions found on Archive.org.

You just need to set up a free account on Archive.org to get access to their vast digital library. Archive.org is great for previewing books that you might want to purchase, or, you can use it to broadcast books on a large tv or device for family or classroom use.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I receive a small commission from the links below from Amazon at no extra cost to the buyer.

1. Eyewitness Ancient Egypt (DK Eyewitness)
2. Egyptology by Heather Alexander
3. National Geographic Kids Everything Ancient Egypt
4. Ancient Egypt for Kids (Unfolding the Past)
5. Ancient Egypt: Crafts from the Past (found on Archive for free with a free account)

Step #2 - Plan and Schedule the Ancient Egypt Unit Plan

During and after you have had a brainstorming session with the children, you can begin planning and scheduling your ancient Egypt unit study. You'll have the most important input from your kids which will point you in the right direction to start researching and gathering your resources.

1. List out resources in a unit study planner.
2. Add book titles, urls, resource types
3. Schedule dates

Step #3 - Research and Gather Ancient Egypt Unit Study Resources

Gathering the resources for your ancient Egypt unit study can be one of the most fun aspects for you as a homeschool or school educator. It's the adults particular roll to help the children learn what they want by providing a resource rich environment. Once you've brainstormed with the kids on what they want to learn, now is the time to start assembling more books, videos, supplies and experiences, such as field trips helping them learn it.

How to Gather Ancient Egypt Unit Study Resources

Resource gathering can also get quickly overwhelming. Here's how to prevent getting overwhelmed.

1. Start with what you already have on hand.
2. Invite the children to help gather resources.
3. Go the library and get specific ancient Egypt books centered on the topics the kids agreed that they wanted to study.
4. Find some storybooks about ancient Egypt.
5. Assemble art and science supplies for chosen ancient Egypt projects and experiments.
6. Create little learning centers with the resources for the children to begin playing with and exploring their chosen sub-topics.
7. Schedule any related field trips.

Step #4 - Make Ancient Egypt Unit Study Subject Connections Across the Curriculum

There will be natural subject connections found in your Ancient Egypt Unit Study. It's great to see just how many subjects you'll be covering and can record for state reporting purposes. Teachers have certain standards that you'll want to look out for and check off accordingly.

Ancient Egyptian Subject Connection Ideas:

1. Ancient Egyptian History - history is the typical focal point of this study. In your unit study planner, you can add what historical topics you cover.
2. Ancient Egyptian Language Arts - Your learners will be reading and potentially writing about scads of ancient Egyptian content that interest them. This is language arts, baby! One thing that excites me to no end about unit studies is that we can trade out the boring textbooks for "living books" that are fascinating to read. Create some fun and creative writing learning centers that get the kids stoked about writing about content they're already interested in. I always found that writing class went way faster when we wove in things to write about that the kids were passionate about.
3. Ancient Egyptian Math - Oi! Math seems to be the stumbling block of K - 12 education. Why can't we just see that math is richly and beautifully all around us, including in ancient Egypt? That's why I created the Golden Ratio and Great Pyramid Lapbook, so that you and your learners could make some rich connections with real life math and ancient Egypt!
4. Ancient Egyptian Science Experiments - Science connections abound in an ancient Egypt unit. Think of the chemistry involved in embalming, the leverage used to hoist the great stones to create the Great pyramids, acriculture development, bouyancy of the great barges, to name a few. The Eyewitness books are great for pointing out science relationships.
5. Ancient Egyptian Art Projects - Ah, ancient Egyptian art projects make my heart sing! There are so many incredible projects that you and your kiddos can do from all across the web.

Grab NatureGlo's eScience FREE Golden Ratio and Great Pyramid of Giza Lapbook and Notebooking Templates below.

Step #5 Ancient Egyptian Unit Recording and Assessment

Here are ways that you can record and assess your ancient Egyptian unit study experiences.

1. Journal about the unit study. I provide a beautiful journal template in NatureGlo's Unit Study Planner BUNDLE.
2. (OPTIONAL) Blog about your unit study journey and thus share it with other homeschool and school educators.
3. Take pictures & video your unit study.
4. Create lapbooks for your unit.
5. Do notebooking.

Ancient Egypt Unit Assessment Ideas

1. Assign a project for learners to complete about their favorite ancient Egyptian sub-topic.
2. Use a rubric to grade their projects.
3. Create a test based on all of the sub-topics studied in the unit.

Recording your unit study learning experience in video, photographs, and in written form, allows you to be able to look back on the fun learning journey you and your kids shared together.

Recording the unit study can and should be a lot of fun as you take photos and or videos of their projects, written work, art, etc, and keep it to look back on for memories sake and for the ever looming homeschool state reporting.

Did you know that the Golden Ratio and Great Pyramid of Egypt lapbook templates belong to a much bigger online course for homeschoolers, or, downloadable teacher curriculum? I call it MathArt.

HOMESCHOOLERS CLICK HERE to learn more about MathArt online course for kids ages 8 and up. Younger siblings join in the learning fun with older siblings too!

TEACHERS CLICK HERE to learn more about MathArt, ideally for grades 4 - 8.

Conclusion

Creating your very own Ancient Egypt Unit Study plan doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't have to take you months upon months to plan. You can literally do this on the fly if you're short on time by doing what I call "relaxed unit studies".

You can do a unit study on the fly with literally online resources at your fingertips. Any resource you want is just a Google away. My hope is that you'll have a bit more time than just Googling Archive.org Ancient Egypt books and have fun getting out to the library with your kiddos exploring the wonders of ancient Egypt through real books. I mean no disrespect for digital online books, but, there's just something so magical about physical books that our society is losing touch with since the digital age.

Finally, you can use simple materials that you already have on hand at home to fill in the rest of the unit's hands-on art projects and science experiments before investing in purchasing materials. Start slow, try the unit study for a while before purchasing physical supplies. See what vibes with your learners before investing.

Learning stations stocked with paper, pencils, cardboard and paints with a simple laminated prompt for creativity can go a long way for fueling kids creativity.

Talk Soon,

NatureGlo