By David Karas | Correspondent

The sixth-grade students in St. Rose Grammar School, Belmar, took a significant step in preparing for the school’s Egyptian Museum through trying their hands at the ancient practice of mummification.

Since there were no deceased Egyptian kings in need of mummification the students settled for using oranges instead. During the much-anticipated mummification lab, the students removed the pulp of their oranges, filling the inside with baking soda and salt before designing amulets and wrapping each mummified orange with cotton gauze.

“The students love this project,” said Travis Semblewski, the school’s marketing coordinator. “It seems to be something that all the lower grades look forward to participate in when they reach the sixth grade.”

The mummification lab is just one component of the school’s larger Egyptian Museum cross-curricular project, which brings together a range of subjects in connection with the study of Egyptian history. Colleen Reilly, who now heads the school’s middle school math department, launched the museum initiative 10 years ago and still remains involved.

“The hands-on learning and engineered projects always excite everyone,” she explained. “You find children going home and reading about Egypt on their own and coming in and sharing interesting facts they have found.”

She continued, “In this activity they do it all: research, computers, math, religion, science, language, social studies, stem, community, art, cooperative learning, following directions,  maps, poetry, novels biographies (and more).”

Reilly said that the Egyptian Museum project sparks a great deal of interest in students there, and taps into their still-forming abilities to learn, retain and share their knowledge with peers.

“There is nothing boring about Egypt unless you are just reading pages, defining vocabulary and answering comprehension questions,” she said. “I like shared learning. Students are told they are the expert in their field of study and they will teach others. In this day and age of computers and phones, students need oral communication skills as well. They teach their classmates parents and fellow St. Rose Grammar School students on that day.”

All grades tour the museum, and so the learning that takes place among the sixth graders extends far beyond their classroom, Semblewski said, adding that the project helps identify untraditional ways of learning about various topics – with the Egyptian Museum challenging students to solve math problems using Egyptian numbers, write poetry in language arts class and design Canopus jars in art class, just to name a few.

“It is about finding unique ways of engaging minds and improving the learning process,” he said. “If we had the ability to transport everyone to Egypt they would be enriched by that experience. Obviously that isn’t possible, so we create Egypt as best as we can in the classroom to accomplish the same end.”