Field Trip: King Tut at the De Young in San Francisco

Today was our first home school field trip. It was awesome.

We did a lot of studying ahead – we rented a number of movies from Netflix (see list below) and it really helped us prepare for the event. We also spent time learning more about the culture from the book, Ancient Egypt Revealed. It has good information about different aspects of Egyptian life that was really interesting to Katie.

The exhibit took about 90 minutes to get through (and gramma was way slower than Katie and I). Some of the pieces were absolutely beautiful and we were really interested in the canopic jars. Because we did our homework, we understood the relationship of the Pharaohs to one another which really helped.

I highly recommend the exhibit for anyone with kids probably eight and older. There’s enough to see that will interest them and if you watch at least one film ahead of time, they should understand what they are seeing.

Meanwhile, back at home…
The day had a kind of bittersweet ending. The school Katie was supposed to attend finally posted the classroom assignments and her friend called to tell her she got the “good” teacher. Katie was ready to go to that school and get started.

We decided to check the information ourselves and found out that she actually got the horrible teacher. That made much more sense (based on what had happened in fourth grade, we knew she would be assigned to the bad teacher).

We spent an hour with her friends who were also bummed about their class assignments and then went home to be grateful that we had dodged a bullet. We had a plan – home school – and it was looking more and more like it was going to be a good thing!

Home School POV: Katie is planning on writing a one page journal entry on her day. 

Pre-King Tut Movies:
The Mysteries of Egypt – this is an IMAX production. It’s a great overview, very easy to watch and is beautifully filmed. The other upside – it’s kind of short – about 50 minutes. Katie liked this one the best.

Egypt: Engineering an Empire – outstanding focus on the buildings, many we had never heard of, and how the Egyptians innovated like no one before. It’s a little long – we did it over two nights – but it is well worth it.

The Mysteries of Egypt: The Pharaohs – this was kind of a boring film. Mom and I ended up watching most of it – Katie felt like it was repetitive based on what she had already seen. It’s not very well produced and pretty stuff (British).