Egyptian Death Masks

We have been learning all about Ancient Egypt in our class.  Recently, I taught the students about King Tut.  The learned about his life, death, burial, and the discovery of his tomb.  I did some "shared writing" with them for this blog post.  Here is what we wrote:

We made some really awesome Egyptian death masks!  First we covered some plastic masks with vaseline.  Then we covered them in cast plaster. We had to wet the cast plaster so that it would stick.  It was really messy!  Then we let them dry.  Next, we went outside to spray paint them gold.  It was hard to push the button on the spray paint can so Mrs. Shabaga and Mrs. M. had to take over the spray painting.  After that, Mrs. Shabaga gave us a nemes and beard to colour with metallic markers.  We used black permanent markers to draw the kohl eyeliner around the eyes of the gold mask and we drew on eyebrows.  Then we coloured a cobra and vulture to go on the top of the nemes. Hot glue was used to glue the nemes, beard, cobra & vulture to the mask.  Finally, Mrs. Shabaga put our masterpieces up on the bulletin board in the hallway for everyone to admire!