Mummies in the Morning

We have been talking about rereading our Magic Tree House "Mummies in the Morning" book. May reminded me of the lesson plans that we used to do with the Magic Tree House books. Even though he loves the books, Jayden didn't think the lessons were that fun so I started searching for ways to make it more exciting.

I stumbled across a really cool idea about notebooking for Magic Tree House books with composition notebooks (found here). So I got to work setting one up for Jayden.

Juan bought Popsicle sticks which ended up being a bit too small for the tree house cover I envisioned. Instead, I used emery boards (nail files) and glued them on top of the template for the tree house. I didn't like the Jack & Annie printables from the link above (because I suck at drawing and they looked ridiculous when I finished free-handing them) so I printed and cut them out from here. I let everything dry overnight and voila! Jayden was very excited to see his notebook this morning!

I printed a map of Egypt from here. Then I colored it by myself since Jayden said coloring maps is lame. Gee, thanks kid!

I printed out the "Story Mapping With Annie" & "Fact Tracking with Jack" pages which can be found here when you click on the Mummies in the Morning book.

We will be loosely following their lesson plan for this book. Jayden actually seems very excited to start and told me this notebook is already better than his boring spelling notebook. I agree ;)


The great thing about these books is that they cover a wide range of educational subjects. Mary Pope Osborne (the author) has a complete curriculum key here with a checklist of each subject the book covers and what you can take from the book to build on in different subjects.  This is the main page of their website which has lesson plans, printables, and tons of ideas for each book!