Week Two: What Do Egypt and Florence Nightingale Have to Do With One Another?

This week we spent a lot of time working on our dual themes of Egypt and Heroes. We followed Jack and Annie in High Time for Heroes as they encountered Florence Nightingale in Egypt where she was struggling with her decision to study nursing against the customs of the time and the wishes of her family. We talked about other real life heroes such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Medecins Sans Frontiers/Doctors Without Borders. Our quest this week was to raise funds for MSF and these ten children were an inspiring bunch who raised $280. They chose to donate the money to bring a nurse, a midwife and a doctor into a community for a day and fund an obstetrical stethoscope as well. We also made lanterns, learned about pictograms and hieroglyphics, studied pyramid structures and played the ancient Egyptian game Senet. On Friday, we travelled to the Egyptology rooms at the ROM where we looked at artefacts from daily life and checked out the mummies (human and cat!) which were, I am told, “just awesome”. Next week we will leave our fragile planet and travel into outer space.