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Egyptian Party (7-9yr) Mummy Wrap Game

August 2009

Barb in Aurora, OH, USA

Honorable Mention

We took a lot of ideas from this site (thank you everyone)!  Summer birthday, held outside for about 15 kids and 15 adults. Kids ranged from 2 to 12 years old. We had great weather, so didn't have to have indoor contingency plans (a nice change for us!) 

We opened with crafts. I bought Egyptian collars, cuffs, design your own pyramids and preglued jewels from Oriental Trading Company (OTC). The kids didn't touch the collars or cuffs, but spent a lot of time decorating pyramids. I recommend glue dots or double-back sticky tape to assemble the pyramids (so they don't have to wait for glue to dry). The other thing the kids liked was Elmer's paint pens (not sure of exact name) --- they were able to get the whole pyramid colored quickly and evenly (better than markers). Watercolors might work, too. 

Mummy wrap game. We divided kids into 3 teams and had them wrap one person as a mummy. Best wrap job in 5 minutes won. Notes on this I got 20 rolls of Scott's. I have a lot left over; I think 10 rolls would have been sufficient. It might have been good to go a little higher end --- it tore easily, so some of the younger kids had trouble. 

Next game was a bit of a scavenger hunt. Divided into teams and gave them hieroglyphic clues which they had to translate. Note on hieroglyphics --- there are a lot of websites that give ways to translate hieroglyphics, but not all of them use the same letter-to-hieroglyphic translations.  I told the kids that archaeologists weren't always given complete information :-) 

The first clue led them to an archaeological dig site (the sand box). They had to dig up a ring pop, necklace, gold coins, and their next clue. I had used one of the pyramids to give instructions -- particularly, one item per person; I wanted everyone to get one of each. 

The second clue took them to canopic jars. I went to the Goodwill shop and got some canisters and painted them with spray paint and glitter paint (WalMart carried this --- it doesn't really cover the surface, just makes it look glittery). I put pearlized onions in one (for eyeballs, OK, not exactly Egyptian), whole tomatoes (for hearts), and cooked pasta shells (for intestines).

I hid the next clue (in small Ziplocs) and gold coins in these, so they had to stick their hands in the jars. I put this on a table in a tent (so it was darkish and they couldn't see in the jars). 

The third clue took them to the Nile River. We laid a bunch of blue tarps down and put firewood down so they could cross (this worried me a bit; I was afraid someone would fall off. I tried to make sure they were stable. Everyone was fine). At the end of the Nile was a crocodile's nest. They had to get the eggs from the crocodile's nest for their next clue. 

Final stop was King Tut's tomb. We have a playset with a clubhouse at the bottom, so we covered this with Kraft paper and drew some Egyptian drawings on it. We have a fog machine, so had that going, too (kids love the fog machine!)

Inside was a sarcophagus --- a largish plastic tub covered in Kraft paper that I drew King Tut's image. Inside was a mummy (I wrapped a largish stuffed bear with strips of muslin) and their prize bags. Note on this I had the kids' names in hieroglyphics on the bags, but they paid no attention at this point, although they had been pretty enthusiastic about decoding earlier in the game.

In the bags I had candy (Rolos and Hershey's Treasures are fun), plus crocodile wind-up toys and crocodile slap bracelets from OTC. The slap bracelets were a hit with both boys and girls.  

We didn't do cake we did off-theme Sundae bar. The kids love putting together their own Sundaes. To help make this go more smoothly, I had already had the ice cream scooped into bowls, so just had to bring it out from the freezer.  Hope this helps! Have fun.

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