Pyramids The Inside Story
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pyramid/

Every year for the past 6 years, I look forward to teaching my grade 5 students about ancient Egypt.  And nothing fascinates my students more (or their teacher!) than the monuments the ancient Egyptians left behind.

Two of the monuments covered in this website are the pyramids and the obelisks.  (The Mysteries of the Nile link at the bottom right left of the webpage will take you to the obelisk section.)

This site is the companion site to the NOVA produced This Old Pyramid and Secrets of Lost Empires: Obelisk video series.

Although it’s great to have the videos, this website contains the entire transcripts of the video series, video clips and teacher and student activities that stand alone from the videos.

Pyramids The Inside Story is divided into the following sections: Explore the Pyramids, Follow the Excavation, Table of Contents, Newsflash, Mail and The Mysteries of the Nile.

For teacher guides and great student activities, click on the Table of Contents link and scroll down to the Resources section.  Here you’ll find ideas from other teachers and student activities.  Included in the student activities are the building of a scale model of the pyramids (printable template available), and information on the height, base, blocks, angle and passageway presented with great examples that students can understand.  For example,

“More than 2,300,000 limestone and granite blocks were pushed, pulled, and dragged into place on the Great Pyramid. The average weight of a block is about 2.3 metric tons (2.5 tons). How much is that? Well, you can think of it in terms of refrigerators. An average refrigerator weighs about 91 kg. If 1 metric ton = 1,000 kg, how many refrigerators equal a 2.3-metric ton block?
(answer 25 refrigerators).”

This is a great site for both teachers and students.  It really makes the ancient past come alive.

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