Cuneiform Scrolls

I realize that Ive been missing in action the past few weeks. We had a busy time, traveling to Boston, then Phoenix ( where the kids did a really cool day camp and learned about Southwestern culture! Hopefully will post pictures from that soon!). We are back home now, and are still as busy as ever, but thought we'd post a few pictures from one of our little activities.

The kids are learning about Ancient Egypt in our history lessons, and the means by which we are able to learn about these people. We learned about how clay tablets were commonly used to record information, but were only used until they figured out how to use paper. However, we know less about Ancient Egyptians after paper was used, because paper deteriorated while the tablets held up much better over time.

We had copies of the Cuneiform Alphabet (and hieroglyphics which looked much more complicated to draw), So we "carved" cuneiform into playdoh "tablets" ( which i forgot to get pictures of, and were quickly destroyed in favor of making spaceships and snowmen.) and the kids wrote secret messages on scrolls we made, in cuneiform ( although I'm not sure they used it on paper, but whatever!), then had to decode each others scroll.

Here are some pics!