Fourth Grade Ukulele box sarcophagi!

My husband owns a music store that is Chicagoland's ukulele headquarters!  I couldn't help but be intrigued by the interesting shape of the ukulele boxes I kept seeing piled up in the alley.  Those could be art!

He started saving them for me and I started dragging them to school.  I had just enough for an entire grade level to do a ukulele box project... but what?  I put the question out to the Art Teacher's group on Facebook, but I wasn't too thrilled with the answers.  So, I went with my first instinct and turned them into Ancient Egyptian Sarcophagi.

We began with a slideshow I downloaded. from another website.  We learned about hieroglyphics and talked a bit about the history of Ancient Egypt.  We even took a virtual tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Ancient Egypt section through Google Art Project.

Next, we looked at more photos of sarcophagi and completed my sarcophagus worksheet.  Students were excited about drawing hieroglyphics, but didn't want to copy the Ancient Egyptian sarcophagi examples.  I told them they didn't have to!  They could make their sarcophagus look anyway they wanted as long as they created balance, had pattern, and used hieroglyphics somewhere.  They had a great time making Minecraft, princess, and superhero themed sarcophagi.

We wrapped our ukulele boxes in gold paper and painted our sarcophagus on tag board.

An Axl Rose sarcophagus on the left, and a traditional King Tut on the right.

I used thumbtacks through the back to hang them in our hallway.