You know me: I love a great project and Carmella Van Vleet’s book, Great Ancient Egypt Projects You Can Build Yourself, is full of them. Unfortunately, I don’t always have the time or resources to try everything I want to in class. I’ve found the next best thing is to offer the ideas up to students as extra credit projects.

During our recent unit on Ancient Egypt a few students took up my offer and made obelisks with floral foam and spray paint, or a peek-inside sanctuary with a shoe box. The really neat thing about the sanctuary is that they were able to add the sarcophagi they made earlier, thus extending the lesson.

Holes are put in the top of the box to let light in, and the box is lifted to view the inside through a side hole, like looking into a tomb. It’s awesome! I like that one of my students made sure to even nicely decorate the side with the viewing hole, adding to the Egyptian feel.