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Monday, January 31, 2011

Lifesize Egyptian Sarcophagus


3rd graders are finishing up their last lesson for our stop in Egyptian art history on our art history timeline! We are combing the skills we've been learning to sum them all up into big teambuilding creative project!






Each table works as a team to practice the skills we've done so far: They have already made their own mini sarcofigus with lots of color and lines of pattern, so they know how to draw one and what it looks like (even though we'll have visuals out to look at again), learned about and made their own cartouche, and worked with Egyptian heiroglyphic alphabet and symbols.

This was also a test of how to work with others and have a positive group experience. I talked about how to work in groups and how to talk about strengths and weakness, how you feel and difficulties in groups. I gave ideas of scenarios and how to handle those, such as: "Would you want someone in your group to say, "Ew! That looks terrible! You're bad at that!" Everyone agreed that they wouldn't like it if someone talked to them like that because it can be hurtful to one's feelings about their artwork and you didn't create a solution to your problem. I explained it's a good idea to ask about strengths and what are some positive ways to make changes and how to go about them. We got off to a great start with a few bumps but ended smoothly. I asked students to raise their hands if at the beginning if they had some difficulties. They raised their hands. Then I asked, did you find solutions to those problems by the end of class today, did things go better later? They raised their hands. I explained that was what the purpose of this activity was:
 How to work effectively in groups.
As for the project, we picked the person with closest birthday to present day and that was the person to be the 'mummy'. We talked about how they needed to 'assume the position' including crossing arms, taking off shoes, and keeping legs 'glued' together. Tracers needed to make sure they weren't tracing feet & showed them again using my projector the visual of the sarcophagus and how it was FLAT at the bottom. We used long sheets of brown craft paper the size of our tables. The students loved that they got to actually lay on the table. First groups designated who was good at drawing what with pencil and drew the outlining details.

 Others who's strengths were coloring/designing, took charge of pattern and color! We used metallic crayons (amazing!) and metallic colored pencils,

added detail with gold metallic paint (super neat!)




 and finished with metallic gold stamp pads and heiroglphics alphabet stampers to create a cartouche to finish it! We are going to draw straws for each table to decide who takes it home to be fair. First I want to hang them in our hallway if there's room!



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