mummified barbies and writing greek scrolls
A couple weeks ago my little friends (1st-5th grades) and I met to learn about Ancient Egypt. After identifying Egypt on the map and talking about Ancient Egypt: "mummies, pyramids, sphynx's, oh my!" we began the rather messy task of making mummies. Making mummies out of $1 store Barbies--said Barbies which caused me to look like a total creep-o with some kind of fetish when I went into the store and bought 19 of them. (You can never have enough cheap Barbies when you work with children).
I made a flour and water paste for the kids and after passing out paste, barbies, and piles of old t-shirts-turned-shredded-strips-of-fabric, we began. As the kids wrapped their barbies from head to toe I explained the FASCINATING steps in which bodies were mummified. See here (this is a great resource!)
The kids loved the gross details of it; brains being ripped out of noses with long, sharp hooks and the like. Ancient Egypt is a topic that I have never found boring. And it seemed too that the kids felt the same way!
When the barbies were thus mummified, we boxed them in $1 store boxes, which I told the kids were their sarcophagus', which were to be decorated at home later when the barbies dried.
This week the same group met to make write Ancient Greek Scrolls. After talking about some of the cool things the Ancient Greeks gave the world: beautiful architecture, drama in theater, knowledge of math and space, etc. We set about making our scrolls (I made a bastarized version of this scroll.)
Earlier I had:
I made a flour and water paste for the kids and after passing out paste, barbies, and piles of old t-shirts-turned-shredded-strips-of-fabric, we began. As the kids wrapped their barbies from head to toe I explained the FASCINATING steps in which bodies were mummified. See here (this is a great resource!)
The kids loved the gross details of it; brains being ripped out of noses with long, sharp hooks and the like. Ancient Egypt is a topic that I have never found boring. And it seemed too that the kids felt the same way!
When the barbies were thus mummified, we boxed them in $1 store boxes, which I told the kids were their sarcophagus', which were to be decorated at home later when the barbies dried.
This week the same group met to make write Ancient Greek Scrolls. After talking about some of the cool things the Ancient Greeks gave the world: beautiful architecture, drama in theater, knowledge of math and space, etc. We set about making our scrolls (I made a bastarized version of this scroll.)
Earlier I had:
- taken tablecloth cardboard (our tablecloth comes on these huge rolls. Wooden dowels can also be used) and cut them into one foot pieces
- burned the edges around tan colored aper to make it look aged
- taped paper to end pieces. (one end piece at the top and one at the bottom of the sheets of paper)
- I had also found a great sheet that had Greek letters aligned as much as possible with English letters
So, the kids were given the alphabets--Greek and English--and told to write a letter on their scrolls, matching our alphabet to the Greek alphabet. They did a great job! I wish I would have gotten a pic of how they turned out. Some kids went as far as drawing pictures around the borders of the scrolls! I always remember to take pictures while I am doing my test run, then usually leave my camera in my desk drawer when the kids are here--ugh!
Anyway, both projects turned out well, and I will have to post pics of my trial runs soon!
Comments