IN THE CLASSROOM:Pyramid sweet pyramid

Adrienne Urban’s students are learning a valuable lesson this month at Newport Heights Elementary School: how to cheat grave-robbers.

For the last few weeks, the sixth-grade class has been learning about the culture of Ancient Egypt, from religion to the steps of mummification. One recent project had each student designing his or her own pyramid — the resting place for Egypt’s monarchs, the depositories for their earthly treasures and a hot spot for thieves.

Urban’s students, crafting pyramids out of cardboard, had to decorate the walls with pictures and text that depicted their lives. Then, on the floor, they set about making their coffins hard to find.

“I put deadly spikes, low oxygen, trap doors, deep holes and a lot of dead ends,” said Annie Fleming, 12, of Newport Beach. “For extra credit, I’m going to put in a little sarcophagus coffin out of clay.”

The assignment allowed students to craft a self-portrait, with images spelling out their interests and accomplishments. Annie portrayed herself as having graduated from Stanford and become a veterinarian, while fellow Newport resident Courtney Buck, 11, illustrated a soccer ball, a skateboard and other examples of her athleticism.

The Egyptian pyramids are one of the wonders of the world, but they represented more than the end of life on earth. Each Egyptian king, it was believed, became a god at death, and the pyramids pointed toward the sky to symbolize a connection to the heavens. As they molded their pyramids, Urban’s students learned the holy side of Egypt by researching and drawing its deities.

On Thursday, the class took drawings of Egyptian gods and goddess they had made with glue on black paper and colored them in with chalk. They didn’t need to imagine human faces for most of them; many gods and goddesses had the heads of jackals, falcons and other animals.

Like the Greek gods, they had specific roles — Ra, the sun god, oversaw the universe, while Osiris ran the underworld and Ma’at handled truth and balance.

Urban said she had to narrow the list down to the major seven or eight gods.

“They had a god for almost everything,” she said. “They even had a god for doorknobs.”