Fun Family Day at Kelsey Museum

Today was Family Day at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. Today’s topic was Roman Life in Egypt. My daughter loves both Roman and Egyptian history so she was thrilled. When the museum tweeted me about the event last week, I knew it was a must attend event for us.

About Family Day

There were lots of activities setup in the old part of the museum for the kids. The exhibits are in the new wing. They had a lot of wonderful crafts and activities setup for the kids. My daughter loved doing all of the activities. We will definitely plan to attend future Family Day events.

However, I would have liked to see a little more background information available about the time frame these activities were from. For example I never realized that the Roman Empire was in Egypt. Several of the activities centered around Karanis. I would have liked to have more information included about Karanis. Since my daughter has an interest in the time period, she would have enjoyed learning more about the village. From their website I have discovered the Karanis is an Egyptian village that has been excavated by University of Michigan over the years. The museum currently has a display focusing on the Ptolemaic era. In January, they will be featuring the changes that took place as the Romans took over the village and eventually brought Christianity to the village.

Admission to Kelsey Museum

Admission to the museum is by suggested donation. We arrived at the new portion of the museum on Maynard St and were sent through to the old portion of the museum for the Family Day activities. On our last visit to the museum in the summer of 2010, the entrance to the old portion was closed and we had to walk around to the new entrance. My daughter was happy to walk through the exhibit to the event and get to see the child-mummy.

Family Day Activities

The museum had some toys for the kids to test. My daughter was amazed to see horse pull toys much like the seal one that she has. Many of the toys looked similar to toys she has seen at Greenfield Village.

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We played a game called Knucklebones where you were rolling bones like dice and trying to see had the higher score. It was really hard to determine which number each bone was as the sides were quite similar. My daughter’s friend had arrived while we were playing and was at the next table making a wooden clapper, so my daughter gave up on the game after the first round.

The kids loved drawing designs on their pieces of wood to make a clapper. They had both markers and colored pencils for the kids to use. In the entryway, they had a writing contest for the kids. They were asking the kids who would win a fight between a Mummy and a Gladiator. It seems like most kids were picking the Gladiator due to better weapons and the mummy being dead.

The next room had tons of crafts for the kids. They could make a toy buzzer with a clay disk on string or make a necklace. My daughter had trouble getting the toy buzzer to work properly as her hands kept slipping, but the other kids seemed to have no problems. As soon as she saw kids making a necklace, she was ready to go do that. They had a wide variety of beads for the kids to choose from. They had a kit with a string, a pendant (my daughter’s looked like a scarab beetle), and a few beads. There were several other bins of beads for the kids to supplement from. The necklace kits were packaged in a ziploc bag and they said we could take them to store the necklace in. It was a great idea, because it gave us a place to put all of the crafts she made.

The kids could paint their own magic bones. When excavating Karanis, they found many painted bones. This was a chance for kids to create their own (on plaster bones).

They also had fabric for kids to make a Karanis “Barbie”. My daughter had to make her own doll. The kids got to pick their own fabric strips, face fabric, and scarf yarn color.

The final craft was a Karanis horse. The kids colored the paper and then cut it out. The horse was assembled with 2 short wooden dowels and 4 thumbtacks. My daughter noticed that the horse was the right size for the Karanis Barbie and decided to give the doll a ride. She was so glad that the doll came with an “accessory”. She is clearly a shopper.

We had a great time at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology’s Family Day. We are definitely going to plan to attend these in the future. The next Family Day is on February 18 with a Dynastic Egyptian theme.