Flooding The Nile River

In our third week of studying the "Story of the World" we began learning about Ancient Egypt and the Nile River. As well as reading, narration, coloring and mapwork our main project for the week was flooding the Nile River. We learned before the Aswan Dam was built the Nile flooded every year. This was important for Egyption farmers because the flooding water left silt rich in vitamins and minerals on their land for their crops. With that in mind, we got busy building our own small Nile River to watch over the course of a couple of weeks as we learn about Egypt and the surrounding region(s).

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The girls searching for rocks for our river bed

 Pouring in the dirt for our river banks/croplands

 Seperating the banks of the Nile

 Placing the rocks in the riverbed and Nile Delta

 We planted grass on the banks as our crop. We also placed some large rocks on one end to represent the mountains of Upper Egypt.

 Then we let loose with our water hose aka the Nile River (the triangle shape in Lower Egypt represents the Nile Delta)

 We may have gotten a little carried away with our flooding process...

 Adding our Nile Crocodiles

 Two sweet girls with their completed Nile River

Watch for updates on how our crops and additional weeks of flooding the Nile River have worked out. :)

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There were a number of great books from the suggested reading list for this week. Our favorite was titled "Bill and Pete Go Down the Nile" by Tomie dePaola (Putnam, 1996). It was a story about a young Crocodile and his class learning about and touring Egypt. The girls love this book so much it might be one we purchase for our own collection. A close second was "Croco'nile" by Roy Gerrard (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001). The last book we would recommend is "Egyptian Gods and Goddesses" by Henry Barker (Grossett & Dunlap, 1999). This was a nice age appropriate yet thorough explanation of Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs.

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The girls did two narrations this week. The first was on how upper and lower Egypt were united called "Two Kingdoms Become One." The second was called "Gods of Ancient Egypt." I really enjoy hearing what the girls have learned from our work and watching them draw their illustrations. I will try to take some pictures of their narrations to share in the future.