Posts Tagged ‘unit study’

How to Make an Ancient Greece Foil Mask

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

ancient-greece-foil-mask

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.

how-to-make-foil-mask

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.

markers-on-foil

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!

foil-masks

Ancient Greece Unit Study

Monday, January 3rd, 2011

Ancient-Greece-unit-study

These are some of the activities we are doing for our Ancient Greece Unit Study. I include lots of hands-on activities to have fun with my kids during this time period. Watch the video to see all the fun goodies I have planned, and click on the links below the video to see how we did them:

Ancient Greece Unit Study: Hands-on Activities

Ancient Egyptian Feast (Hands-on History)

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

Egyptian-feast

As the culminating activity for our Ancient Egypt Unit Study, we had an Egyptian feast. We dressed up in our Egyptian tunics and ate foods from Egypt. (We bought all of these foods from a regular grocery store.) Here is a video describing what we ate:

  • cucumbers
  • fish
  • pork
  • onions
  • leeks
  • celery
  • green beans
  • radishes
  • watermelon
  • bread
  • dates
  • pomegranate

Take a look at how we prepared these foods for our Egyptian feast:

Egyptian-dinner

Three-Dimensional Anatomy Poster

Friday, November 12th, 2010

anatomy-poster

Years ago when we studied anatomy, my children made a life-sized poster of each of the systems of the body, one by one as we studied them. The child would lie down on the butcher paper, and we would trace the real body of the child. We usually covered one system a week or one system for two weeks. We colored each system a different color so that we could distinguish which was which. It was a fun project that the children enjoyed.

Recently when I went to the state fair with my children, we saw a three-dimensional anatomy poster of two of the systems of the body: the circulatory and digestive systems. The intestine was made of panty-hose, and the stomach was a clear plastic bag with cut-out pictures of food in it. (I like humor in a project occasionally because it adds personality to the artwork.) A drinking straw was the esophagus. The heart, lungs, and trachea were made of felt, and it looked like the child stuffed it and sewed it around the edges. The brain was like the bottom part of an old-fashioned mop. It was really fun to look at!