Thursday, June 25, 2009

Ancient Egypt

As I talk about in a previous post, Madeline has been studying about Ancient Egypt.  She has been very excited about this and I am amazed at the time she has spent reading books about the subject and learning in particular about hieroglyphs and the pyramids.  She decided that she would like to make her own pyramid, so she brainstormed ideas on how to make it, and came up with an idea to make a pyramid from paper mache.  Initially she was going to use wire coat hangers to make her base, but we decided instead to use a cereal box.  She had a great time making the pyramid, and it was clear that she has learned quite a bit about the building of the pyramids and the Ancient Egyptian afterlife. 


Madeline cut out the shape of her pyramid from a cereal box and taped it together.  She was careful to measure each size to be sure each side of the pyramid was the same.

She mixed up the paste - one part flour to two parts water, but we did end up adding some extra flour to make the paste a bit thicker.

She put all of the newspaper strips in place and smoothed them down carefully.

She did this over 2 days to ensure that it was strong enough.

This is her finished, painted pyramid.  She put on a base coat of yellow and then went over the wet paint with white to make it lighter.  

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