Here's a fun mummy music video (sorry I couldn't get it to embed with a picture).
Here's another great link I found about mummies and ancient Egypt from The British Museum.
Bodies were mummified with natron. According to wikipedia natron is sodium carbonate decahydrate or a type of soda ash, 17% sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), and small amounts of sodium chloride and sodium sulfate. We aren't actually mummifying anything though. Just wrapping.
Supplies: wire, needle nose pliers, newsprint strips, masking tape, glue, water, fabric strips, gauze (optional).
I took pictures of each step, but I can't seem to find them. Here's a link to the tutorial I used to make the wire body frame for our mummies. After making the wire frame we wadded some newsprint into a ball and stuffed it in the loop that is the head and then taped around it so it would stay. We did the same thing for a back and chest. Then we took strips of newsprint and wrapped them around the body, taping where needed to hold the paper to the wire. Pose your wire and paper man the way you would like.
For the younger class my family and I made the wire and taped mummies so all that would be left is the fabric and glue. I also had my kids on hand to help anyone in the longer class (It is a little hard and most kids needed help). After you have your wire and paper man ready you will need to get a bowl of glue mixed with a little water and stirred together. Dip your fabric strips in the bowl- then hold the strip above the bowl with one hand and slide the other hand from the top to the bottom to get rid of extra glue. Wrap this strip around the wire and paper body. Continue this process until you are happy with your mummy wrapping. Once you have completely covered your mummy you can add a layer of gauze to make it more mummy like. Not all kids are up to this tactile experience. It is messy. Some kids didn't mind, some enjoyed it, some tried it and left to play and came back, some tried it and left to play and didn't try again, and others flat out refused to touch the glue. I did make everyone at least try it before running to my swing set. ;-)
Before class, with my kids, we tried using Paverpol. Paverpol sounded way awesome because it is waterproof so you could use it for outdoor sculptures and this seemed like a good excuse to experiment. It is great, but we went through a lot of it just to do our 6 and it's expensive. I was planning on the preschool group using Elmer's glue mixed with a little water since it is washable and noticed it did a great job so I used the Elmer's for all my classes. I tried using gauze strips I got from the pharmacy, but they are pretty thin and I found that covering the mummy first with muslin torn into strips and then adding gauze on top of that was a better look.
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