The Completed Egypt Salt Dough Maps

Anyone who knows me knows that doing crafty things with the kids is not my strong suit. When it comes to school projects, I would much prefer to skip right over shoebox dioramas, styrofoam solar systems, and salt dough anything. And, to be honest, when I was in school, I probably wouldn't have cared one bit if I had never done any of those things. I would much rather have had my nose in a book than wasting my time trying to find little miniature things to put in a shoebox. But, I know that there are others, like my crafty sister, who love that sort of thing. Shoebox dioramas were probably the highlight of her entire school experience. And, I also know that many children can really learn and retain information well from these hands-on sorts of projects. So, I am putting aside my preferences to try to do some of these "fun" projects with the kids.

Our Egypt map is our first project of the year and I think they turned out pretty well. To be honest, I doubt if the kids will forget where the Nile River is or what the landscape of Egypt is like now that they have created it and painted it themselves. (Will that information ever benefit them? Probably not. But, at least they have increased their knowledge.) And, to be fair, I found it interesting as well. I had never really considered before why everybody always fled to Egypt when I would read about a famine in the Bible, but I now understand that huge amounts of food could be grown there and stored up due to the fertile land surrounding the Nile River, even though the rest of Egypt is desert. So, I will now always remember that as well.

Anyway, here are the projects from start to finish...

Jake's Finished Map

Addi's Finished Map

(actually posted by Kinzi)