A Visit to Ancient Egypt

If you think I've stopped posting on this blog, you should visit my neglected homeschool blog. On second thought, DON'T! I have been terrible about posting updates and if you took my reports there to be a measure of our schoolwork, you'd be very concerned about my children's education. I'm really considering merging the two blogs again, because perhaps somehow that will feel less overwhelming than keeping up on them both.

In light of that, I thought I'd post about a recent field trip our little Academy took to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose, California. We really should have gone back in the fall when we were deep into ancient Egypt, but I didn't know about it then. My kids didn't seem to mind the fact that we were learning about ancient India during the school week and looking at Egyptian artifacts on Friday.

The museum is set on some beautiful grounds with gardens with several buildings built in the ancient style. There was a large outdoor Senet game, which we took advantage of at the end of the day, fountains, and plantings. The museum itself was not large, but they had a surprising amount of artifacts. We loved looking at the mummies, sarcophagi, the toys and jewelry of the ancient Egyptians. There was papyrus and a large diorama explaining family life in ancient Egypt, including how Egyptians welcomed a new baby into the world, which was of particular interest to our family.

There was also a fairly large exhibit of artifacts and replicas from other ancient civilizations including Sumeria, Assyria, and Babylon. The boys were excited to see a replica of the Rosetta stone and of the stele of Hammurabi's Code, as well as an artist's 3-D rendition of what the Hanging Gardens of Babylon might have looked like.

The museum also offered a 40 minute planetarium presentation which we tried but ended up leaving. Brownen didn't make it through the introduction and Ian lost interest almost immediately but managed to sit quietly for about 25 minutes of it. I was surprised that Kimball and Henry did so well with it, as I found it to be a rather dry high-school or college level lecture on the Mithraic Mysteries. I would recommend it for kids at least 10 and older who have an interest in the ancient world, otherwise wait until they are teenagers.

Here are a few shots of the kids playing Senet outside before we headed into rush hour traffic to drive home. I wish that I had taken more pictures of the grounds, but that will have to wait for our next visit.