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Art History project: King Tut’s Tomb
I have been having a blast going through ancient Egypt history, and I’m loving all of the projects we’ve done so far, but I think by far our King Tut tomb frieze was my favorite history lesson this time around. For whatever reason I find Egyptian wall friezes and the artwork in their temples to be fascinating. I love the simplicity of them, and the hard work that went into creating all of their brilliant artwork.
So when I was asked to pick a project to do with my kids I took one second and said, “King Tut tomb frieze!”
{I was compensated for my time and received a free copy of the product, my opinions are my own, please see my entire disclosure page}
Then I spent another thirty minutes or so drooling over the projects. I could have used the canopic jars for our mummifying a chicken project, and I’ve always wanted an oil lamp, how cool would that be? Needless to say, I ran away from the site before I spent all the money in my school budget for the next couple of years on projects for me to do.
Funny story about our Art in History project (before I get serious here)
So, it arrived and I immediately took a picture of the box, because I was that excited, off to Instagram I went with many happy comments on my part (I would like to note, this is not that picture, it’s another one I posted). Then I got it out and kept thinking, “How cool is this, but man, it’s going to be hard to completely draw this from scratch. I’m surprised they didn’t provide an outline.”
I kept saying that, and I glanced through the instructions and saw a reference to sketching with a pencil before painting, and I thought for sure I was right.
Then we started the project and I discovered: I was looking at it upside down! The entire time there was this nice simple etched outline of the project so even the youngest kid could do this art kit.
I felt very stupid then.
Creating our Art History project of King Tut
(future Ticia added the phrase ‘King Tut’ because we’ve since done a few other art history projects)
First I laid a few ground rules for our art history project:
- There is no gesturing with the paintbrushes, these are acrylic paints, which means it will not come out of your clothes no matter how often I wash them.
- This is fragile plaster, if you start to fight, you will no longer be painting. Each kid will get a turn to try.
- Be patient and work on this slowly.
Then we talked about Egypt and went through the awesome lesson plan included with our art kit (it’s like 10-15 pages, mostly informational. I think there are only a couple of pages for the actual painting).
We learned about Upper and Lower Egypt, which was a great review because our last lesson on it had been two weeks earlier. Then we learned about the pharaohs and mummification, another great review because we’d talked about that as well almost a month earlier. See how nicely this is all tying in to our history lessons? Then we talked about their funerary art.
Which gave me a great excuse to drag out my copy of The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day (affiliate link, I picked it up at the Field’s Museum several years ago, like 10). It’s a wonderful resource because it’s a duplicate of an actual funerary text, and let the kids see all of the artwork and how distinct the colors are.
Quick break from art history for some King Tut resources
I’m gonna break in here and share some extra resources I would suggest to learn about King Tut.
King Tut and mummification YouTube videos
There is a lot of good history on YouTube, there is also a lot of bad history, so here are a few videos you can watch together.
First off we have a Ted Talk on the Egyptian Underworld, and then we’ll head over to National Geographic for a quick video.
Then a video of the food saved for King Tut with Eating History’s recent video.
Then back to National Geographic for a day in the life of the boy king.
Some King Tut books
I love to grab books from the library to supplement the lesson. Now my library didn’t have these particular books, but most of these are from fairly solid series, so I feel safe recommending them.
- What’s so Great about King Tut?
- The Curse of King Tut’s Mummy (totally true adventures)– true stories with
a bit ofa lot of humor - Who was King Tut?– another book in this solid series
- Howard and the Mummy– a book on the discovery of the tomb, this is not a part of a series but from what I can see it’s pretty solid
Then we got down to business, painting our art kit.
Art in History included more than enough paint in the art kit, I was stingy with the paint at first being afraid we’d run out, but in all the colors we had at least half a pot of paint left, and considering we had to repaint a few things, that’s pretty impressive.
We got to work on mixing paints, a skill I am not good at. The kids enjoyed it and laughed as the colors mixed.
Then we got down to the serious business of turning this from an art kit into a piece of art history (see that clever turn of phrase there?). First, we painted the background color, completely destroying the sponge in the process
{side note, my one complaint is we completely destroyed the sponge, and it’d be nice to have a backup, but we also were pretty hard on the sponge, and most women have makeup sponges if you need extra}
Then we added the words (this was the point they talked about pencil sketching, see if you READ the instructions it makes much more sense).
I sketched in the sample hieroglyphics, Art in History gives you the hieroglyphic alphabet if you want to personalize it to your family, but I kinda liked recreating the history aspect, so we used the hieroglyphs present in the original from the sample.
Digression to talk about the art kit sample picture
Ummm, it’s gorgeous. It was indispensable to completing the art kit. We kept flipping back to the picture to see what it looked like there. I’ve had several kits that didn’t compare to the description and pictures they gave us in this one and so much background information to back up the project.
End digression
Back to making our art history project
Overall it took us about 2 hours to complete the art history project. This was the perfect project for our family because each of the kids got to paint their own figure (AND they each got to paint the one they wanted). As we painted the figures we talked about what was going on in the painting we were creating (thanks again to the directions).
You know what the hardest part of this project was? Letting the kids do the art project and NOT me! I was dying to do this art kit. I worked so hard to not take that paintbrush away from them. I did finally say I got to put the final black outlines on the project.
I claimed it was because I could hold my hands more steadily than they could, but really it was because I wanted to do it.
Where should we hang our King Tut tomb frieze?
It’s gorgeous, the kids did a great job, and it looks amazing, but I don’t know quite where to hang it. I’m halfway tempted to hang it in the kitchen, it’d be a bit odd, but it just looks so dang cool.
More art history lessons
Comments
19 responses to “Art History project: King Tut’s Tomb”
Now I am drooling over that kit.
I know, it is seriously awesome. Ever since I completed it, I’ve been thinking about those canopic jars. My kids would have so much fun with it. And I REALLY want the oil lamp.
I think you should hang it in the living room.
What fun!!! I love the look of concentration on Princess’ face! I love the finished project! So pretty!
definitely hang it in the living room or the room that is used the most! I love this!! I can’t wait to look at all the stuff they have!
I’d certainly feature it prominently – it came out fantastic! I totally understand your feelings about the site, I am now considering a Greek vase!
Oh the Greek vase kit is awesome!
That looked like so much fun! They did a great job. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks! They really did do a great job.
How fantastic! We did a home made version using plaster and a tray. It still turned out well (although not quite to the same standard as yours!). All these kits one can buy now are just so great and make home schooling a blast!
I’ve always had horrid luck where I made anything with plaster. I don’t know if I mix it wrong, so being able to skip that step was a big life saver.
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I think you should hang it wherever you want – it looks awesome! I would be very tempted to do this kit on my own – it looks like fun!
This would go perfectly with some of the studies we’ve been doing too! Love it!
I don’t think I answered your actual question in my comment . . . Hang it near the front door, so you can show it off to all your friends and visitors!
That is a very cool kit and your finished artwork is beautiful! Your commentary made me smile as usual. 🙂
This is so cool. I wish I’d had it when we did Egypt. Art in History is awesome. My kids want to do all of the projects.
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