Optional Activities
Family Discussion: Should Mummies Go Home? 
The lesson raises a real, ongoing debate: many Egyptian mummies now sit in museums far from Egypt, and Egypt has asked for some of them back. Sit down with your learner and talk through it together, there's no right answer, but it's a good way to get them thinking about who gets to decide what happens to objects and remains from the past.

Mummification Hands On
Give your learner a doll, stuffed animal, or action figure and walk them through a pretend version of the whole process from this week's lesson. Start by having them act out removing the "organs," you can use small pom poms, beads, or cut felt shapes tucked inside the doll's clothing, and set them into four small jars or cups decorated to represent the canopic jars from the lesson. Next, have them "salt" the doll by rubbing it with a bowl of salt or a salt and baking soda mix, standing in for the natron Egyptians used to dry the body out, and let it sit for a few minutes to represent the drying step. Then wrap the doll in strips of gauze, toilet paper, or torn white fabric like the linen bandages embalmers used, tucking a few small objects between the layers as pretend protective amulets. Finish by having your learner decorate a shoebox as the doll's sarcophagus, adding symbols or objects that matter to them, and place the wrapped doll inside.

Chicken Mummification 
This is a well known variation homeschool groups use to make the process feel more real than the apple version. You'll need a whole raw chicken (or a chicken leg/thigh if you want something smaller and cheaper), a large amount of table salt, and a container big enough to fully bury the chicken in it. Weigh the chicken first and record it, then pack it completely in salt the way embalmers packed a body in natron, making sure every part is covered. Leave it somewhere out of the way for a couple of weeks, checking on it periodically, and you'll see it shrink and dry out rather than rot, the same drying effect from the apple experiment, just on something closer in structure to human tissue.

A few practical notes since this uses raw meat: have your learner wear gloves when handling the chicken, wash hands and surfaces well afterward, and keep it away from any food prep areas the whole time. Once the experiment's done, it should be thrown away outside and not composted or left somewhere pets can get to it.

Video of a similar process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vslUjoZNYSA