Completed Mummy

Georgia finished painting her papier-mâché mummy. The mummy wears an Ankh necklace like the one Georgia made for herself.

Mummy

Last week Georgia started making a paper-mâché mummy! We found the idea in one of our library books, Make History: Ancient Egypt by Nancy Fister and Charlene Olexiewicz.

She started by making a cone shape out of newspaper. We cut it to measure about 8 inches tall. She told me that for measuring horses they use hands, and the adult hand is roughly 4 inches wide, so she used my hand and cut the top at 2 hands. We taped the cone and filled it with the newspaper we cut off. Then she crumpled newspaper into a ball and taped it on top to be the mummy's head. She also folded the point of the cone and taped it to look like the feet.

Next she made the flour and water glue mixture, using 1/4 cup flour and 1/4 cup water.

And she wrapped her mummy using white paper strips dipped in the glue.

Here she sits drying. Georgia said it'll be a girl mummy.

We let the mummy dry overnight. The next day she drew a design and started painting. She still has more painting to do before her mummy is complete. I'll post pictures when it's finished.

Livy's nature class...

Olivia had her nature class on Thursday. A naturalist from a neighboring nature center visited and brought some birds with her. She taught the kids what physical features are found on birds, adaptations, behavior, etc. This class was a little shorter than usual. Her regular naturalist just had a baby and is off being a mom for the first time!

Janus, Februa, Mars...

On Groundhogs Day we watched this year's celebration as Punxsutawny Phil predicted six more weeks of winter. We were not impressed. I don't understand this "holiday". Weird I tell ya... We did learn that it is the exact middle of winter here in the northern hemisphere. That's interesting I guess.

That did, however, spark an interest in the origin of calendar names, which then sparked even more interest in the history of time keeping traditions. Here are some of the sites we visited:

Announcing the Sky Calendars through the Ages, astronomical origins, year, week, calendar name origins.

Walk Through Time From the National Institute of Standards and Technology, The evolution of time measurement through the ages.

Official US Time just click a time zone.

Calendar Origins "answers to many questions about calendars"

Current Moon Phase for the northern hemisphere. will be a full moon in a couple days.

Calendars: Counting the Days from the World Book Encyclopedia.

Physics Phun!

The girls have had fun playing the online physics puzzle game Fantastic Contraption. You have to build a contraption to move a pink circle into the goal. Each level is more challenging. It sparks some creative thinking. Click on the picture below to try it out!

Volcanoes!

After reading the news about Alaska's Redoubt Volcano on the brink of eruption, we did some further explorations on volcanoes.

We played with a virtual volcano, changing variables and seeing the effect it has on the eruption.

Learned more about volcanoes from FEMA...

and at National Geographic Kids.

And we watched the BrainPop video on volcanoes.

After that, the girls had fun playing with the variables of an avalanche and seeing the results on National Geographic's Unleash an Avalanche.