1st Grade Egyptian Cats

In the winter, I was able to take a trip down to Washington DC and visit the Freer and Sackler galleries, where they had an exhibit on the role of Felines in Egyptian Art. It was really cool to learn about how Egyptians associated their traits with specific divinities. Cats enjoy the sun, so they were frequently associated with the God Re. Because of cats protective instincts, many goddesses were represented as female cats. As a result from my experience, I had my first graders do a quick project based upon this exhibit

Materials Needed
Gold Acrylic Paint
9x 12" Black Construction Paper
9x12" white drawing paper
brown/orange Crayola Color Stix
Texture Plates
Torn kraft paper sheets ( long enough to fill bottom of paper)
Orange/Yellow/Red Flourescent Tempera Paint
Paint Brushes
Pencils
Sequins (Optional)

Day 1#- I talked to my students about the background information about Egyptian cats as described above. Using pencil, students drew an eygptian cat on a 9x12" piece of black construction paper. I encouraged them to draw a small pyramid behind their cat to be used later on. They then used small brushes and used gold acyrlic paint to go over their original drawings.

Day 2#- I spoke to my students about the weather in Egypt. How it is mostly made up of desert, and is usually very hot there. We identified the hot colors on the color wheel, and I also explained how they are analogous colors on the color wheel. I had my students paint the sunset in a circular motion, starting from yellow, orange, and then finally red using tempera paint on a 9 x12" piece of drawing paper.

Day 3#- After the students' background had dried from the previous week, it was now time to put all of this together. I gave the students small pieces of torn kraft paper, and demonstrated how to use color stix and place texture places underneath to create a texture rubbing. This would create "sand". When done with that, they cut out their Egyptian Cat Paintings and (pyramid). I had the students arrange their pieces before gluing down to make sure the perspective was right. First the background paper, then torn kraft paper, and the Egyptian cat on top to make it look like our cats were sitting in the sand! I used some tacky glue and added a little sequin on the cats' crown for fun!

3rd Grade Egyptian Scenes

3rd Grade Egyptian Scenes

Materials Needed
Paint Brushes
Tempera Paint (Flourescent Yellow, Orange, Pink)
12 x18" Kraft Paper
Construction Paper Crayons
Burnt Sienna/Tan Crayons
Brown Chalk Pastels
Q-Tips

I have recently become very inspired by Egyptian Art. The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, MD has an awesome collection on display. This unit focuses on Value and Form. The first day of the lesson, I introduced Egyptian art. I talked about how pyramids were built, and how most of the land is made up of desert. We reviewed both shape and form. In Art, pyramids are considered as form in art because they are 3-Dimensional. We started by practicing how to draw pyramids before we started on our final copy. When students felt ready, I gave them a  12x 18" piece of kraft paper.  I reminded students about when the start to draw their pyramids, that ones closer to us would be bigger and ones farther away would be smaller (space). I encouraged them to draw at least 3 pyramids.

On the second day of this unit, students finished drawing their pyramids, I had them draw some camels too! I talked about value and how students were to use brown, tan, and peach colors on the pyramids to create value. I showed them how to blend the crayons in. When the students were done coloring in their pyramids, they used brown and orange chalk pastels to add sand to the bottom of their pieces. I demonstrated how to use q-tips to help smear the chalk pastels around the pyramids. The q-tips also help keep the students' hands clean.

On the final day of this unit, I had the students use flourecent yellow, pink, and orange tempera paints to paint in the sky of their works. I encouraged them to blend the colors together to make the sunset.