Last week we studied Egypt, and I really wanted the girls to understand more about mummy making. Although there are some great science activities where you can mummify a whole chicken or a piece of fruit, I felt that at this age they would get more out of learning the rituals of mummification. I hope to do one of those other activities when we come back around to Egypt in a few years. But for now, we focused on the process and Barbie made a very willing participant.
First we prepared Barbie by placing the organs from a squishy body set on top of her. The girls then took turns pretending to pull them out and placed them in jars. Leah especially loved pretending to pull out the brain with our pretend brain hook.
Next, they pretended to wash her and then sprinkled Barbie with salt to dry her out. Normally, this process would take 40 days, but we used our imaginations and proceeded after about 40 seconds.
Next we began wrapping her up in our faux linens- tissue strips. They worked out pretty well. Kaiya was able to do a lot of the wrapping on her own, although I had to help where we connected the wrapped pieces together.
And here's Barbie, all mummified in her shoebox sarcophagus. Unfortunately for her she did not remain a mummy long. The girls had her unwrapped within the hour. I suppose that the plastic will preserve her into the afterlife, even if the wrappings won't!
