Since theater began in Ancient Greece, we decided to make some foil masks while studying Ancient Greece. We’ve made many masks over the years, mostly with card stock paper or pre-made blank masks from the craft store. This time we used aluminum foil.
How to Make an Ancient Greece Foil Mask
We folded the foil in half, and then in half again, to make a skinny line of foil. We cut out the eyes by doing a V-shape against the edge of the fold.
The children could shape the head any way they wanted. My kids all wanted ovals except for my oldest son, who designed his own shape with Sharpie marker. When he did this, the foil was only folded once, not twice.
We colored the foil masks with markers. My 5-year-old girl made two masks. Nobody wanted to make a sad face. (You know, the symbol of theater is two masks, one happy for comedy and one sad for tragedy.) Anyway, my oldest son’s mask looked like it belonged in Ancient Greece!
Tags: art, crafts, history, Homeschooling, unit study
how fun and creative
Thank you! The masks came out better than I thought.
Wow! The masks are beautiful. I’m just getting started with homeschooling my children and am glad to have found a place with fun ideas. Thanks!
Glad you enjoyed our activity!
How did you get the mask to stay on the face? And did you say some mask were doubled up with foil and one was not ?
We just held it up. If you want, you can put packing tape on the back sides, then punch a small hole and put string through it with a knot. Then you can tie it at the back of the head of the child. It wasn’t doubled up, but you could do that if you wanted to make it more sturdy. You would just need to glue the two layers together.