Julia Jarman - Egypt and Beyond!

Learning About Egypt Through Fiction at St Columba's School

As part of Fife’s 2010 Children's Book Festival, teacher Natalie Young's P4 class went to see children's author Julia Jarman, author of The Time Travelling Cat and the Egyptian Goddess.

Inspired by the children's interest, Natalie then linked the author event to class work in various ways.

Below is a case study of the cross-curricular lessons and links she developed around the book, including a list of the many subjects this module covered. 

P4 Goes to Egypt (Word Version)

P4 Goes to Egypt (PDF Version)

Children's Feedback:

When Natalie asked the class "Why we are doing these activities?" after their successful Egyptian Afternoon, the children in her class had quite a bit to say:

Lauren:  "We are making Egyptian jewellery because we are learning about the Egyptian people and gods."
 
Jacob:  "We were making the cat magnets out of salt dough because in Egypt they worshipped cats.  Our magnet project gave us the idea to put magnets on to the back of them."

Laura:  "Julia Jarman and the Egyptians linked because in the Time Travelling Cat and the Egyptian Goddess, Ka time travels to Egypt."

Sarah-Jane:  "The invitations for our class assembly are linked to the story because the play is an Egypt and so in the story Ka and Topher go to Egypt."

Aidan:  "We found facts about Egypt on the computer to help us learn more about Egypt."

Lara:  "We made the cat magnets because in the Time Travellling Cat Ka is one of the main characters and she goes to Egypt."

Callum:  "We made the salt dough cats because we were reading a book called The Time Travelling Cat and the Egyptian Goddess and the cat in the story was made of gold and we made our salt dough magnet cat and painted it gold because Ka was gold.  Also our science project was on magnets."

Wioletta:  "When we looked at the globe we found Egypt and it was near the east and it linked to magnets because the earth is a big magnet.  We made magnet cats because Ka was a golden goddess.  We painted the eyes blue because in Ancient Egypt they liked lapis lazuli.  We found out facts on the computer.  We did the hieroglyphics with a circle around it to show that it was a king or queen."

Saskia:  "We wrote in hieroglyphics because when we went to see Julia Jarman she showed us a presentation on the Time Travelling Cat and in the book they were talking about the golden scroll that was written in hieroglyphics which told Topher about the secret of Ka."

St Columba's RC Primary is also working with Scottish Book Trust as one of our Meet Our Authors Flagship Schools, sponsored by Scottish Friendly Assurance.

To read more about their experiences of using live online author events in class, visit the Flagship Schools page.