For lots of mummy recipes you can follow yourself, click here. You can make a chicken mummy, a mouse mummy, a doll mummy, or (yikes!) a human mummy. Follow the instructions carefully.

On Egyptian Day at the Dulles Elementary School, students dress as Egyptians, bake Egyptian bread, host an Egyptian museum, and put on two plays--The Egyptian Cinderella and The Winged Cat. The whole school enjoys Egyptian day each year. (Thanks to Lisa Stiehr, her children, and the teachers at Dulles Elementary School, Grade 5.)

Joyce P. described the following Mummy Day (actually two days) in Mrs. Pieruccini's 3rd grade class at Buzz Aldrin Elementary School in Reston, Virginia:

DAY 1:

STEP 1: Give the class a mummy quiz [questions 1-7 in Chapter 1 of James M. Deem's How to Make a Mummy Talk] and explain the answers. Following the quiz, read Mummies Made in Egypt by Aliki.

STEP 2: Divide the class into groups assigned to make each of the following: sarcophagus, mummy case, mask, mural in tomb, canopic jars (use large boxes for the sarcophagus and the mummy case). One group took on the role of scribes, recording and later reporting on who was in each group and what they did. The final group was charged with writing and then acting the judgment play.

DAY 2:

STEP 1: With the help of the teacher and parent volunteers, have the kids assemble their products. Joyce P. was the embalmer, working under the watchful eye of Anubis. Using a home-made mummy, she removed the brain, lungs, liver, stomach and intestines, which were given to the canopic jar makers. Then she salted the body inside and out (with cotton balls), ostensibly waited 40 days, and completed other preparations including applying resin (sheets of black tissue paper on top of the mummy). Then, the mask was placed on the mummy, and the mummy case was placed on top of the mummy. The sarcophagus makers then showed their work, as did the mural drawers, and the kids who drew outside and inside viewers of the pyramid.

STEP 2: The judgment play was performed with Anubis, Ammit and Thoth. The mummy's heart was weighed on a scale and, since it weighed more than the feather of truth, Anubis tossed it to Ammit.

Joyce adds: It was great fun, and the kids did marvelous work. The creative credit for the Mummy Day goes to Mrs. Katie Pieruccini. When she was a student, one of her most memorable learning experiences was watching her teacher mummify a dummy, pulling out its brains and internal organs. She wanted to give her students a similar experience -- and she did. I think this story is a wonderful example of the impact a good teacher can have on her or his students. Maybe one of Mrs. Pieruccini's students will be a teacher some day, and Mummy Day will live on.

Teachers can assign topics for which students create a museum exhibit. To give you a more concrete idea, here are some examples of the displays at the Egyptian Museum  created by students at the John Jay Middle School in New York State. 

Get a copy of a book called The Complete Pyramids  (by Mark Lehner, Thames & Hudson, 1997). It covers all the different types of pyramids (including samples of hieroglyphic inscriptions on some). If you decide to make a New Kingdom pyramid, for example, try to build a side view, making the inner side of the pyramid out of mud or brown clay (to represent the actual inner building material), lined on the outside with sugar cubes (to represent the stone facing of the pyramid), perhaps painted a more appropriate color. Draw (or trace) all hieroglyphs on clay tablets and glue them to the inner walls. As for the objects and sarcophagus, model them out of clay (and don't forget the canopic jars).

Use papier maché or plaster.

Be creative in manufacturing the internal organs in the jars.

Chris wrote about his Egyptian project: "My group decided to make a mummy out of my friend Mykahla. We are going to wrap her with toilet paper and put all kinds of jewels and necklaces on her. We are going to paint her fingernails gold, instead of how the Egyptians placed gold caps on the nails."