Our "Mummies"

Here in Wisconsin, most children refer to their mothers as "Mom" or "Mommy." When our blogging partners in New Zealand referred to their mothers as "Mum" or "Mummy," we chuckled a little, because when we think of mummy, we think of our Ancient Egypt study of mummification!

In 6th grade, students learn about ancient civilizations. Recently, Egpyt was the focus, and students learned about mummification. Our science teacher, Mrs. Kohls, discovered a terrific activity for simulating the mummification process. For the past several weeks, we have been "mummifying" chicken legs!

First, students washed, measured, and weighed their chicken legs. 

Oops! Can you see which rule of lab safety we forgot to follow in the next two photos?

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If you guessed "Not wearing goggles," you guessed correctly! 

Even though washing and measuring chicken legs isn't an activity that would likely damage the eyes,

 it's best to always be in the habit of wearing goggles when conducting experiments in the lab.

Next, students placed their chicken legs inside plastic bags 

containing a mixture of salt, baking soda, and  cinnamon.

Each week thereafter, students take their "chicken mummies" out, measure and weigh them, 

record the changes, and put them in a bag with a new batch of the drying ingredients. 

In our studies, we learned that this stage of the mummification process took 40 days.

We are currently in our fifth week of this activity.

It will be interesting to see the final results of our mummification process

and to discuss how our process is like/unlike the process the Egyptians used

so many years ago in the desert.