Egyptian hieroglyphs workshop

We attended a 'scribe school' workshop at the Hancock Museum today, where the children learnt about Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and deciphered some themselves.

We spent the morning reading these books to get ourselves in Egyptian mood and we also watched YouTube videos about the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and Ancient Egypt.

I also read Harry the Egyptian chapter of this book, which I love! We will be reading it all over the next year or two and it gives a really good and accessible overview of history. I am reading it myself as well as reading parts to Harry.

At the workshop we had to match hieroglyphic pictures to the letters of our alphabet (we used our 26 letters for simplicity, although there were hundreds more hieroglyphic pictures). There were also posters around the room with hieroglyphic pictures which we had to translate back to English to find the meaning. The children also wrote their names using the symbols. There was a replica Rosetta Stone which Harry liked - I was pleased we had covered it in the morning so he knew what it was. This was a good workshop as there was plenty to do so the children weren't waiting around and they had to move around the room to look at the symbols, so there wasn't any fidgeting in chairs!