Talk about a doomed project! I hate to say that, but seriously this one was a comedy of errors. It was new, so I made a lot of mistakes.
When 2nd graders learned about Ancient Egypt, we also learned about hieroglyphics. Sometimes Ancient Egyptians would write their names in a cartouche (an oval shape with a rope around it). SO, I thought it would be a great idea to have the kids make name plaques that looked like cartouches and had their name carved in hieroglyphics on the front. The first mistake I made was assuming that the kids would be able to “read” their name on the front and so I didn’t require them to put their names on the backs in English. (WRONG!) After firing the cartouches, no one had ANY clue whose was whose- even when we had their practice papers and the hieroglyphics key. SO, I just called out my mistake and had the kids re-do the project in those classes. Which, they were totally happy to do (for the most part) because it meant MORE clay!
But, then for some reason some of them broke during firing. It looked as though a couple had air pockets in them and broke those around them in the kiln. SO some classes had to re-do again. This time, the kids were totally good sports even though they weren’t thrilled. I wasn’t either- I felt terribly bad about it. I didn’t want to just quit halfway through the project- but I was tempted! Sometimes when you try something new that happens though, so even after all this time of teaching I think it’s OK to say I bombed a new lesson I tried.
After the cartouches were fired, we tried to make them look ancient by painting them black and letting it soak into the cracks where they carved their names. Then, I rinsed off the black paint for them- and it just stuck down deep where the hieroglyphic names were carved. Then the kids got to choose however they wanted to paint them. Some chose gold, some chose to paint and rinse, paint and rinse to make their cartouche look extremely weathered and old. Others chose rainbow colors- or a few colors.
After all of that, I wasn’t really happy with how they looked so I think I may either drop or adapt this project for next year. I was hoping it would be a fun way to review making flat pancakes and coils before making our fancy coil pots- but it didn’t work out that way.
Curse of the mummy anyone? 🙂
Thank you so much for this project! Jayden brought hers home and it looked beautiful. Thank you for also using it as a teaching lesson that it is ok to make mistakes and persevere even if it didn’t turn out how you hoped it would! Awesome!
I’m glad you liked it! Making art is like that- for adults and for kids….sometimes it looks right, sometimes it doesn’t. I think it’s neat that the process always teaches us a lot even if the results aren’t what we imagined!
I was admiring the pictures above and looked at one and thought, “hey, that looks familiar.” I ran over to our fireplace mantle and picked up B’s cartouche and brought it over to compare with the photo on the computer. They are one and the same! It will be fun for her to see her final product on the blog! Thanks for blending your projects across subject areas.