St. Regis students get wrapped up in mummy study

Sixth grade holds Egyptian tour

The St. Regis sixth-graders put their books away for an hour to become curators for an Egyptian museum Friday.

The 16 students of Diane Gingerich's class held an open house to show their parents and schoolmates their Egyptian projects that they had been working on for the past three weeks. At the open house, a group of students eagerly stood outside the classroom door near their cartouches they had made to welcome visitors to their museum.

Once inside the classroom, the visitors were taken on a tour to see the ankhs, mummies, sarcophaguses, 3-D maps and murals the students had created. The visitors were also treated to Egyptian cuisine of raisins, figs, dates and tabouli.

Gingerich said that most the school's students and staff had taken the tour. Sixth-grader Jarrod Tippens wasn't sure how many people went on the tour, but knew it was a lot. "It was packed," he said.

The open house is "the biggest event of the sixth grade," Gingerich said. She said this was her sixth year doing the tour. She said the students coming into her class anticipate the Egyptian projects all year. She said the anticipation was increased for this year's sixth-graders, because when they were fifth graders they were in a combined class with the sixth grade. "They had to watch them do their projects and they couldn't help," she said.

Gingerich said not only do the students take enormous pride in being able to share their projects with their parents and students, but by sharing it also helps them learn more. "They not only learn it, but they develop an understanding of it because the best way to learn is to teach. So they're really teaching other kids," she said.

Gingerich said leading up to the open house, high school students that went through the Egyptian projects with her kept asking her when her class was going to hold the open house. "So I know it stays with them for years," she said.

The open house is such an effective learning tool that many of her students thought the 600-to-1000 word research paper was their favorite part of the Egyptian studies. Damon Lucier. who did his paper on Sekhmet, the goddess of destruction, was one of those students. "It was just fun," he said.

While some students' favorite thing was the research paper, most students preferred making the three miniature mummies and learning about the embalming process. "It was cool to actually wrap a mummy," said Katrina Froehlich.