The Discovery of King Tut

The Discovery of King Tut

Way back during the first week of school in August, we went to the St. Louis Science Center to tour a special exhibit currently on display: The Discovery of King Tut. The timing was perfect, as we’ve started back up with the ancients in history this year. Turkey, in particular, is really interested in ancient Egypt, and we were all really excited to go through it.

Even before the main section of the exhibit begins, there is a lot to look at, including a replica of the Rosetta Stone, and a model of Tut’s Tomb.

After that first room, there’s a short and very informational movie (Downton Abbey fans will want to keep an eye out for the appearance of Highclere Castle!), followed by the main bulk of the exhibit. You begin by viewing an accurate replica of the antechamber as it appeared upon its discovery:

The next part of the exhibit focuses on Tut’s burial chamber:

There’s also a look at the riches found in the treasury:

Followed by the many parts of the shrine:

After the individual vignettes, there are replicas of pretty much everything, including Tut’s childhood throne, canopic jars, games, makeup, jewelry…even a chariot! This allows you to really see what things looked like up close:

This exhibit may contain “only” replicas (over 1,000 in all!), but they are extraordinarily detailed, and really make you feel like you are touring Tut’s tomb. It’s a great opportunity to see a bit of history up close, and it’s in town through early January, so you have time left to walk in the footsteps of Howard Carter and see Tut’s tomb as it was when it was first discovered in 1922!

2017-18 School Year–Week One

The first week of the 2017-18 school year is already behind us! This year, I have two ninth graders, a fifth grader, and a Kindergartener!

We started on Tuesday, so it was a short, four-day week. And the first day of school is always mostly fun…finding out what’s in this year’s schultüte, handing out books and organizing desks, taking lots of pictures, and building a Lego set. The latter took several hours, as it is the largest Lego set (the Lego Ideas Saturn V), that we’ve ever built in school. It was a fun project that everyone got to help with (we intentionally started before Moose’s first day of school so he could participate), and was educational, thanks to the fantastic extra details in the instruction book.

On Wednesday, we had a pretty full day of school, beginning most of our subjects for the year, from high school geometry and biology to fifth grade math, spelling, and vocabulary, all the way down to reading Ramona the Pest out loud and Kindergarten handwriting. But then we took a break from our work on Thursday to go on our first field trip of the school year, to see The Discovery of King Tut at the St. Louis Science Center. It was a fantastic exhibit, full of extremely well done replicas from Tut’s tomb, and was also a great way to kick off our history studies for the year, as everyone is going to be studying ancient history in one way or another.

Today we finished off with another regular school day. The only subject we haven’t started yet is our various literature studies (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to start for Turkey and Bunny, and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe for Ladybug), which we will add to our schedule next week. I’ll close with something new for this year…I chose a Bible verse to be our theme for the year for the first time ever, and I think our chosen verse of Philippians 4:8 is an especially good reminder with all the chaos in the world right now:

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”