This exercise provides our students a chance to collaborate with their peers, build on the comments of others, and ask questions (2.SL.1).

This exercise also allows me to demonstrate writing. Once the student provides an answer I will write it (word for word) on the board. This provides the student the opportunity to see their own words in writing (2.WF.1).

This activity provides the students a chance to connect the new words with actual objects, places, and or people (2.L.5). The pictures connect the meaning of the words before our class goes through the process of officially defining the words (2.L.4).

Reading to students provides them with a way to imagine what is happening, provide them with an example of the rhythm of storytelling, and can introduce different cultures (2.RL.2).

Showing our students where Egypt is vs where they are can make a lesson come to life. In this lesson we will introduce the location of Egypt and the Nile River through the video of Buster going to Egypt.

Once we watch the we will have a conversation about how important the Nile River is to Egypt. We will view the Nile on Google Earth, we can zoom into different areas to show where the water stops and how that affects the land. We will also look at the irrigation system that provides Egypt with food, water, entertainment, transportation, and energy.

We will go to the playground so each group constructs a Nile of their own in the sand. Each Nile must look similar to the actual Nile with the river, streams, and irrigation links. We will line the "rivers" with plastic so the sand does not absorb all of the water. Once constructed we will pour water into the "Niles" to see how the water affects the construction (2.EIU1.4, 2.EIU1.5, 2.EIU1.7). The group that reaches the furthest wins that round.

Once completed, we will have a conversation about how the water feeds the plants and can erode the land.

The next step is to provide each group with 3 cups. These cups will be connected by straws and will be placed in a bucket with just enough water to fill the center cup. Once the center in full the water will move to the other cups. This provides the students with the example of irrigation canals that nourish the entire region.

Students learning about the process of fermentation is important as this technology provided the early Egyptian culture food that could be stored for long lengths of time. This also provided them with the education needed to preserve their ancestors.

During this lesson each group will fill Mason Jars with cabbage adding salt to the layers and removing the air from the jar. We will place the jars on the shelf and watch what happens. After a few days the liquid in the jar may run out of it. We will open the jar and smell it. We will see that as we open the jar the contents are under pressure. We will discuss how this pressure was created. We will remove some of the water and reseal the jar. After a week we will open the jar and smell them again (2.L2UI.10).

Once we understand the basics of the process, we will make our own mummies out of dollar store dolls.

We want to help our students understand how difficult this task was so we will take our groups and make one the "boss" and the other the slaves. The boss will instruct the slaves in how to construct the building.

We will use cardboard to build the base of the building. We will need to measure the cardboard to ensure it fits, is strong, and creates a pyramid shape. We will then add rectangles in a tight pattern that looks like blocks. Once the basic shape is created we will switch the students in the group that are the boss. This enables each student to experience each roll.

The second group will add the detail to the outside of the building by gluing sand to the building. We will also use color pages to provide decorations for the inside of the building. Lastly, we will place the mummies we made inside the building (2.MD.A.1 and 2.HI.1).

We will create cardboard and paper hieroglyphs as groups. What we write on our hieroglyph will be in a type of code. Each group will go around and try to figure out what the other groups hieroglyph says. The group to decode all groups hieroglyphs first wins (2.RF.3)

During this lesson we will create a store with items that may have been in a Egyptian marketplace. Each group will have a section. One will have the produce and another the meats.

Our students can understand how different but the same our markets today are from the one of yesterday (2.MD.C.8 and 2.E1.3)