Temples, Tombs, Hieroglyphs

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This year for history I decided to use Train Up A Child's: World History Course.  This world history course is a literature base course. Luckily for me most of the books needed can be borrowed from my library.  Currently we are studying Ancient Egypt and working our way through the book: Temples Tombs, & Hieroglyphs.



This is a bit of a slow read for us, slower then I would like, but we are making progress and working our way through it.  In the course of reading we learned a little bit about James Henry Breasted. Breasted is one of the first American Egyptian Archaeologist that made a lasting impression on Egyptology, his work is still used today.

Web-princess took a special interest because she learned he was born here. I learned Thursday night that his remains were actually buried here too. So Friday morning we took an impromptu trip to the cemetery to hunt down Breasted's grave marker.   -- what makes his grave marker even more unique is that it's made from a block of granite from Egypt.  I think this is the closet she'll or even I will get from touching something from Egypt.

Smiling and standing next to Breasted's headstone.

It's always nice when a bit of what you are talking about can come "alive". Sure it was just a tombstone. However, it connected us personally to this archaeologist that we are talking about and his discoveries and work.

Under this granite block from Assuan, Egypt lie the ashes of James Henry Breasted

How has your homeschooling going? Any impromptu trips? impromptu activities?

Archaeological Dig

Last Friday we had the opportunity to go to Shabbona Grove, IL for an archaeological dig. The dig is apart of the Shabbona Grove Archaeological Project.  The kids along with other kids from I-HOPE were able to dig, clean artifacts, sift through the dirt, and later catalog items all under the watchful eye of Ms. Croyl.

SS digging on site.

When digging they were told to take small thin layers at a time. This was so they could tell what layer things came from. Also by digging small layers at a time if something clearly unusual pops up then we would see it. Like this red rubbery/plastic thing that we dug out.

unusual red rubbery/plastic thing

When we found something unusual like the red rubbery-plastic thing pictured above then we took measurements of where in the square it was and how deep it was from the surface. We also record it's orination: was it standing up? laying on it's side, etc.  All of that data is recorded into a computer that will give a detail picture of the area.

The above are up-close pictures of that mysterious red thing we found. If you, dear reader, have any idea what it could be PLEASE let me know.  Sometimes archaeologists find things they aren't exactly sure what it is, and it is the case with this red thing.  So if you know please share! This could really help them date other artifacts that were found on the same level, such as a nails and Lincoln log. Lincoln logs go back to the 1916 closer to the time period they were hoping to find. So you never know....

When cleaning artifacts we found coal and bullet shell.

WP in red and friend cleaning artifacts

circled thing is a piece of coal

circled thing is a bullet shell

Side Notes: Yes I know WP (Web-princess)'s hair is SHORT! She had me cut it like that over the summer. It's longer now then it was, but still very short! Also please, if you have facebook, share I-HOPE's fan page with everyone. I'm trying to reach as many homeschoolers I can, especially local homeschoolers! I realize you may not be a local homeschooler, but given how paths can cross, because of social networks,  you may know someone locally to me via the internet or your friends may know someone locally to me.

The co-op is new I started it last summer and I'm trying to grow it! Thanks a million for sharing the facebook fan page.  Also all of the pictures belong to I-HOPE and were used with permission.