Friends of Maple Grove hosted this brand new Ancient Egyptian Art workshop conducted by Maple Grove historian and award winning teacher Carl Ballenas over two Saturdays, October 18 and 25, 2014.

This workshop was attended by children and parents and went extremely well. It was a fun, hands-on workshop to teach children about the Ancient Egyptian and the respect they had for their dead. Rita Rancy made Egyptian headdresses for the children to wear and they looked GREAT! The children learned to write in hieroglyphics and wrote their names. Many parents participated as well.

There was a display of ancient Egyptian artifacts and attendees were amazed at some of the pieces that they could previously see only in a museum! It was inspiring and they continued to make little ushabtis which are Egyptian figurines placed in tombs and used by the mummies to do their bidding. They were made of newspaper and plaster gauze. There was also a field trip to the old Victorian Building where they filled a shopping bags with jewels, trim, pearls etc. for the making of their life sized mummies. I was able to take a quick detour and showed them the incredible Egyptian style monument by the Pyramid Lodge back in 1893.

When we returned, the mom's traced out the body shape of each child onto rosin paper and they used these to make their mummy. Thus ended the first session.

The following week they brought in their finished mummies and they were incredible. Each child made a presentation about their mummy. We continued to our last activity, the Mummy Wrap. They teamed up and used bathroom paper to wrap up a mummy.

The parents told me they also had a great time. It was a great event. Thank you!