Ancient Egyptian Ukulele Boxes Redux

Fourth grade recently finished up an Ancient Egyptian Art unit by designing a sarcophagus out of a ukulele box.

I had these beauties on my big bulletin board in the main hall, and they kept getting knocked off.  I relocated right outside the art room, up high!  I was able to hang more up, and I just wanted to show them off again, so I thought it was worth a re-post.

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.

Cartouche Worksheet - Free Download,and substitute lesson from the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

My fourth graders had just started their Ancient Egyptian Art unit when I was out of school for week.  I didn't want to leave them something completely different then what we were doing, so I searched for an easy to teach sub lesson that had something to do with Ancient Egypt.

Somewhere on Pinterest I found a cartouche worksheet from the Houston Museum of Natural Science.  I prepped the worksheet, and left some markers and strips of construction paper. Here are the plans I left for my sub:

This class was introduced to Ancient Egyptian Art last week.  Please pass out the “about yourcartouche” page to the class.  Read it out loud and have students discuss it.  Show students the photograph of the Ancient Egyptian Cartouche.

 Students will practice writing their name in hieroglyphics on the back of the “About your Cartouche” worksheet.

Once they have practiced, pass out the long strips of gold construction paper.  This will be the inside of their own cartouche.  With pencils only, they should once again write their name going vertically down their golden strip.  If it is too long, that is okay.  Trace and color hieroglyphics with black marker.

Finally, with pencil, draw an oval around your cartouche.  Cut it out.  Make sure your English name is in pencil on the back!

Hieroglyphics Handout

The Hieroglyphics Handout is a pretty extensive breakdown of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics.  Unfortunately, I do not know where it came from and this copy is not the best.  But it is so detailed!  I wanted to include it on the blog.

Nefertari Coloring Page

This Nefertari Coloring Page was originally from a book that I unfortunately have no recollection of.  It is a quality picture and a nice supplement to an Ancient Egyptian unit.

Ancient Egyptian Sarcophagus worksheet

I have been finding a bunch of old brainstorming worksheets, vocab pages, and other resources deep in the belly of my file cabinets.  Some of these are so old, the original file no longer exists...or is on 3.5 inch floppy!

This Ancient Egyptian Sarcophagus Worksheet was used to introduce a sculpture project and integrate with fourth graders study of Ancient Egypt.

Ancient Egyptian Canopic Jars Worksheet.

Integrating art with classroom studies is a fabulous way for students to make connections.  I used to love making Ancient Egyptian Canopic Jars with my third graders.  It was simply a matter of putting two pinch pots together for the body, and one upside down for the head.  Here is the worksheet I used to introduce these works of ancient art.  You will also need to supply the students with a page of hieroglyphics.  I found a nice one here. I apologize for not having the resource for my canopic image.