I’m throwing Mika an Ancient Egypt theme 8th birthday party, and I’ve been having some difficulty finding Ancient Egyptian crafts online or books on Ancient Egyptian crafts on Amazon. However, I was easily able to find four such books at the library, and I figured I’d blog about them for anyone in the same boat.
Egyptian Crafts from the Past by Gillian Chapman is an older book (1997) that concentrates mostly on cardboard based crafts. The crafts include: boxes (rectangular, tubal and pyramid shaped) with Ancient Egyptian motifs, clay/papier mache sarcophagus, clay/plaster scarabs, plaster relief, board game, cat mummy, reed boat, pasta jewelry, cardboard amulets, papier mache canopic jars, mirrors and make up boxes. The crafts are in the challenging side and several require materials that we don’t have at home (reeds, plaster, tubes with plastic stopper), but several look very cool and there are things I’d actually like to make. I’m just not sure we have the skills to make them. The book is beautifully illustrated with color photographs of the crafts and step-by-step drawings.
History and Activities of Ancient Egypt by Alexandra Fix includes an easy to read introduction about Egyptian life and fun as well as a few crafts: a recipe for date sweets, a fake papyrus recipe (made from a paper bag), a papier mache ushabti, and a senet game with instructions on how to play it. I think I’ll try the papyrus recipe and perhaps the ushabti. The book is illustrated with color photographs of the crafts and step-by-step drawings.
Ancient Egyptians and Their Neighbors: An Activity Guide has crafts from Ancient Egypt, as well as from Mesopotamia, Nubia and the Hittites. After an introduction to Ancient Egypt, it goes into several projects like a sugar-cube step pyramid, a tissue box garden, pillowcase costumes, a toilet roll bracelet and a clay necklace. There are short chapters on Ancient Egyptian writing, work, food and religion each with a craft or too. The crafts are illustrated with simple black & white drawings, but in general they seem simpler than those from the previous books.
The Ancient Egyptians: Dress, Eat, Write, and Play Just Like the Egyptians is full of simple, somewhat tackier crafts. These include making a paper crown, a plastic straw boat, checkedboard papyrus from regular paper, a cardboard senet game, a recipe for ful medames, a felt and plastic bead colar (which actually looks cool, but it’d probably be a pain to get the necessary beads), a yogurt cup water clock (seems cool too), a clay winged scarab and a cardboard sistrum (which I’d like to make if I can find small bells).
There are two more books, Great Ancient Egypt Projects You Can Build Yourself and Spend the Day in Ancient Egypt: Projects and Activities That Bring the Past to Life that you can buy at Amazon that were not available at our library, but that get good reviews at Amazon.
I think I have enough with what I have and I look forward to go through the books with Mika and find some crafts we can make before and during the party. I’ll blog about the ones we do and how successful we are.