An Art Trip to the Desert

Sticking to the theme of Multicultural Art and our Multicultural Fair...

A few of my classes across grade levels picked Egypt as their country of choice.  A 1st grade, a 2nd grade and a few 4th grades (but I ignored that choice for another country they were working with)

I'm also throwing in here the 1st grade that chose the United Arab Emirates since I did a desert inspired project with them as well.

Egypt with 1st Grade

The 1st grade with Egypt requested to do mummies...ACK!  Now, I love my cat mummy project but it's papier mache and that drives me much!  The kids just DO NOT seem to understand my simple mess free directions and it turns into a mess...grrrr.  Anywhos, here's my example:

I do this two ways, it's either a plastic bottle or a toilet paper roll for the body and a wad of newspaper for the head.  Ears can be added if you want to do cats, otherwise they're just plain old mummies.  Papier mache and it's good to go for the next class period.  I do do all the mummy building prep work for the littles, but have let 3rd grade and above build them themselves.  I have a WONDERFUL Reading Rainbow show about mummies that I show as well.

I did also let the littles trace their name in hieroglyph using tracing paper and then they glued it to a cartouche.

The United Arab Emirates with 1st Grade

I was excited when this teacher said they were doing the United Arab Emirates because that meant I could do this project that I'd been hoping to do since last Summer when I stumbled upon it on Pinterest.  I did modify it because we were short on time.

We painted our skies the first day (that took up the whole 50 minutes somehow) and then did the dunes and camels the next class.  I did talk about the difference between the two camels (dromedary [one hump, like a 'D'] and bactrian [two humps, like a big 'B'] ) and how we would be making dromedary because they live in the Middle East, while Bactrian live in Asia (who knew).  I think they turned out super cute!  

The last two are the same project, which happens to be mine, the only difference is the shadow which we added after I took the pictures of the kids work.

Egypt with 2nd Grade

This second grade class did Portrait (or Death) Masks for their Egyptian project.  I showed them King Tut's mask and we discussed why they might have needed them and what they were made out of.  

We did a follow along drawing so the kids would get the correct shape and size of the masks and facial features.  I didn't know that this class was full of really good drawers until this project.

Egypt with 4th Grade

This fourth grade class also was working with France, so I tied the two together.  

Have you heard how the Giza Sphinx lost it's nose?  NO!?!  Well, rumor has it that during the Napoleonic War, some of Napoleon's troops down in Egypt were bored of sitting around in the hot desert so they loaded up their cannons and used the Sphinx as target practice.  One shot hit the nose, knocking it off.

Fun History tie in...even if it's not true!

We did the same sky technique as the first graders and boy did I harp on the fourth graders who were having a tough time!  If a FIRST GRADER can do it, so can you!

We also did the same dune technique...again the first graders did better than the fourth graders...bunch of whiners...they did fine, but it was like pulling teeth with some of them.

I did give them a pre-made Sphinx for the sake of time and identification of such on iconic figure.

We also made out own pyramids.  My example is the bottom picture, I gave my sky to a student who was absent that day and I miss counted how many extras needed to be made.