On Tuesday, 20th June year 3 pupils from St. Mary’s Catholic primary were very excited to be going on their trip to the Oriental museum in Durham. Our day began with J. and C. coaches arriving to pick us up. We were very excited, as we are going to be learning about the Ancient Egyptians as part of our Topic work. Our first activity was doing some exploring in the Ancient Egypt gallery. Our teachers for the day were called Jo and Rachael. We worked in groups to explore a range of different topics, including gods, clothing, food, objects and we got the opportunity to investigate writing using hieroglyphics. Some of us managed to be a detective and work out some of the secret codes using Ancient Egyptian writing.

Next we got the opportunity to handle some ancient Egyptian objects, some of these being thousands and thousands of years old. We were so lucky that for one of the objects, there were only 2 available in the whole world! After our fabulous object handling, we were very hungry, so we all sat down on a sunny piece of grass, luckily shaded by a tree in the background. We ate our packed lunches enjoying the peace and quiet!  We had a class photograph taken in the horse and carriage sculpture. In  the In the afternoon, our third activity was amazing- we got to see a real-life mummy. We figured out that she was around 2,400 years old! Jo, one of our University teachers asked us some questions about mummies. We thought it was fascinating! The final activity involved a roleplay activity.

We had to do a re-enactment of a Pharaoh being mummified. Logan was chosen to be our Pharaoh. His body was embalmed and prepared for the after-life. Then some of us were chosen to be gods, asking him questions about how he lived his life. His answers would determine what happened to him. Did his heart weigh more than a feather? Had he lived a life full of doing good deeds? We all got a goody bag at the end of the day; it had some lovely things in it, papyrus paper, a scarab beetle and a lovely Egyptian pencil. We returned to school excited about learning more about these fabulous Ancient Egyptians. Here are a few pupil quotes… “It was the best school trip ever.” “It was an amazing day. I couldn’t believe the mummy was real!” “I am really excited now in discovering more about what life was like in Ancient Egypt.”