Students from Surrey Christian Elementary have spent the last few months learning about ancient Egypt as part of the Grade 7 curriculum geared towards understanding ancient civilizations.
During the initial classroom discussions, a couple of the students expressed interest in publishing a book and wondered if it could be incorporated in their classroom study. That’s where the idea for the Ancient Egypt Alphabet Book was born.
“Each student was given a letter of the alphabet,” said teacher Danny Nagtegaal. “And then the students were tasked with finding out some piece of information about Egypt that started with that specific letter.”
The book is designed to take readers on a journey through ancient Egypt, aided by hand drawn illustrations.
“I had to research the letter B,” said student Paige Forrest, “and I chose the Egyptian spirit Ba, who had a human head and the body of a bird, the spirit of a person that Egyptians felt would live after the body died. We all learned a lot about Egypt, it was so much fun.”
While the students were working on the project, their teacher approached the Fleetwood Library to see if the class’s self-published book would be accepted as a donation to add to the library collection. The Surrey library agreed, and this week the book was presented to Youth Services librarian Jennie Castleton.
Although not something Surrey Libraries does on a regular basis – Castleton acknowledges most book donations are given by established authors – the library felt Surrey Christian’s creation was a worthy addition.
“Anything we can do to get kids coming in and reading is a good thing,” Castleton said.