Quoted Text

ROTTERDAM
Draper students mummify poultry ‘pharaoh’ for class
BY JUSTIN MASON Gazette Reporter

    King Chickenwing was accorded all the burial rites of ancient Egyptian royalty.
    His earthly remains were dried over several months in a salty mixture and then bathed in oil and spices. Before being placed in a subterranean sarcophagus in the Draper Middle School courtyard, he was wrapped in bandages and adorned with all the jewelry befitting a pharaoh.
    A fowl pharaoh, that is. Chickenwing was among a trio of Cornish game hens named and mummified by Kim Coelho’s sixth-grade history class this winter.
    As part of their coursework, the students spent parts of two months preparing the birds in the same manner Egyptians did more than four millennia ago. Coelho said the hands-on approach has turned students on to a subject matter that was previously taught largely from a textbook.
    “We actually go through many of the same processes the ancient Egyptians used,” she said,
    After receiving parental permission for the project, students treated the chickens with a mixture of salt and baking powder. Coelho said the salt drew most of the moisture from the birds, while the baking powder helped limit their pungent aroma.
    “Once a week, they would change the mixture,” she said.
    Students periodically weighed the birds to gauge how much water weight they had lost from the treatment. They also researched Egyptian hieroglyphics and adorned each sarcophagus with the characters.
    After 70 days of treating the birds, Coelho said the students bathed them in baby oil and treated them with a spice mixture of cinnamon and ginger. Students wrapped the birds in gauze and encased them in plastic containers, which were then buried. The tombs were even topped with a with a small wooden pyramid that a parent volunteer built.
    Coelho said the project is a fi rst for her class and could lead to a more expanded effort next year. With elements of chemistry, mathematics and history interlaced, she said, the effort could help students learn a variety of subjects.
    Coelho said the students will exhume the mummies in June to see how well the process preserved the chickens. So far, she said the children seem to have a better grasp from the lesson.
    “Anytime you can get the kids doing something hands on, they learn it and they don’t forget it,” she said,
    Some of Coelho’s students still vividly remember a hands-on approach to learning they had during the fifth grade. Nick Esposito said his class dissected a squid when his science class was studying ocean life.
    “But this was the best so far,” he said.


ANA N. ZANGRONIZ/GAZETTE PHOTOGRAPHER
Draper Middle School sixth-graders Taylor Horton, left, and Amanda Welch show how they “mummify” chickens, covering them with baking soda and salt, in a Mohonasen school project.


Draper Middle School sixth-graders Paul Egan, left, and Nick Esposito smooth plaster onto a model pyramid top for their study on mummies in Kim Coelho’s class on Friday.

Quoted Text

ROTTERDAM
Buried birds teach students a lesson in mummification
BY JUSTIN MASON Gazette Reporter

    Kim Coelho’s students found themselves on the hunt for mummies Friday, the last day of school.
    They were only Cornish game hens, but they had been treated like royalty.
    Friday was nearly six months after the sixthgrade history class treated three — then edible — Cornish game hens with the preservation and burial techniques used for Egyptian pharaohs. To finish the experiment, the students dug up the fowl buried in the Draper Middle School courtyard.
    Amazingly, the birds didn’t look much different from how they were when the class first interred them. Once unwrapped, the birds appeared free of decay, though they had grown a bit darker and smelled distinctly of the spices the students had bathed them in.
    “This is why the Egyptians did this, to preserve the bodies,” Coelho reminded her students.
    Students spent parts of two months preparing the birds in the same manner Egyptians did more than four millennia ago. Coelho introduced the hands-on approach toward the subject to attract her class to a subject matter she previously taught from a textbook.
    The class used a mixture of salt and baking soda to draw moisture from the birds and help limit any pungent aroma. They also bathed the birds in oil and spices.
    Before burying the hens, the students periodically weighed them to gauge how much water weight they had lost from the treatment. They also researched Egyptian hieroglyphics and adorned each makeshift sarcophagus with the characters.
    Despite their research, many of the students doubted the experiment would work. Nick Esposito, 11, said he expected to find the mummies to be badly decayed, especially after the sweltering weather the region experienced earlier.
    “It didn’t really make sense to me,” he said. “I didn’t think we’d dig them up and they’d be the same.”
    The exercise also inadvertently gave students a chance to test their archaeology skills. While two of the chickens were easily marked by a small wooden pyramid the students had fashioned, a third was elusive. So they drew a perimeter around the area suspected of holding the grave and then systematically dug test holes.
    “We were digging all around the place,” said Paul Egan, 12.
    The exercise also prompted some of the students to consider other experiments that could be derived from the mummification process. Taylor Horton, 11, suggested monitoring the rate at which the mummified chickens would decay in comparison to untreated ones.
    “We could do an experiment to see which one would last longer,” she said.
    Coelho said she intends a reprise of the exercise with her class next year and hopes to enlist the help of the older students who completed it this year. She said the handson activity helps the children to retain what they’ve learned better than if they were only doing reading and writing assignments.
    “It’s good any time you can get kids doing something active,” she said.


MARC SCHULTZ/GAZETTE PHOTOGRAPHER
From left, McKenzie Kane, Taylor Horton, Ronnie Zadrozny, Nick Esposito and Paul Egan examine the “chicken mummies” Friday at Draper Middle School in Rotterdam.