Golden Egyptian Cat Statues 2nd grade project

Found the idea for this lesson on USE YOUR COLORED PENCILS art blog. Loved the idea of using up many of my saved paper tubes to make a 3 dimensional cat instead of our usual cat drawings on paper.  Mrs. N and I folded, taped and painted 170 paper tubes with gold tempera paint. We wanted the tubes to be ready to use and decided painting them ourselves and letting them dry was the best way to do the project.

 

The 2nd graders learned that Egyptians LOVED cats.  They took their pet cats bird hunting, made cat statues and even mummified their cats. Cats were useful for keeping mice out of the grain storage and for killing snakes in Egypt. Our I can statement was: "I can learn about culture through Art", and the 2nd graders were excited to make their own golden cat statue after seeing the pictures of Egyptian cat statues adorned with jewelry. I had purchased this small plastic cat statue at a museum gift shop years ago and it turned out to be a great visual for this project!

 

They drew on the tubes with a pencil first, experiencing drawing on a 3 dimensional surface rather than flat.  We demonstrated how to draw a cat face and then let them add their own details. Final step was to trace with black permanent marker and then add some areas of color on the jewelry or other small areas.

 
 We love that the kids made all their cats different and that they were able to make the little golden statue 3 dimensional with something as simple as a folded paper tube!