Kaiser kids learn like an Egyptian

Marisa O’Neil

Students in Beth Nowlin’s sixth-grade class at Kaiser Elementary

School ate and dressed like Egyptians during their Egyptian Feast

class on Friday.

Wearing Egyptian costumes, the students sat amid brightly colored

blankets and cushions, eating traditional Middle Eastern foods such

as grapes, dates and figs as they listened to each others’ reports

about ancient Egyptian civilization.

“I think it’s a topic with a high interest level for them,” Nowlin

said. “And it has a certain pop culture allure, with mummies and

things like that, which they’re interested in.”

One mummy even made an appearance in the class. Evan Call, 11,

wore stretchy Ace bandages wrapped around himself for a makeshift

mummy costume.

“My grandpa just got out of the hospital and brought home a bunch

of bandages,” he said.

Other students draped themselves in sheets, made

construction-paper belts and collars adorned with hieroglyphics and

wore metallic scarves on their heads. Dalton Jaimes, 11, dressed as a pharaoh, and Kody Lawton, 11, dressed as a slave -- but he made it

clear he wasn’t Dalton’s slave, just a general slave.

Nick Markham, 11, went all out with a rented costume complete with

a King Tut-style headdress.

“I, like, how they mummified the bodies and how the whole process

began,” Nick said. “It took 70 days to do.”

“They pulled the brains out through the nose,” Stephanie Garcia,

11, offered.

But some of the less morbid aspects of the civilization also

appealed to the students.

“They didn’t have the technology we have today but still built

really big, high-tech things,” 11-year-old Kaitlyn Fischer said.

Students also fashioned a “tomb” in the back of the classroom with

golden tiles and scarab amulets. In the middle sat a golden

sarcophagus made from a cardboard box.