Making Egyptian Sarcophagus jewelry with friendly plastic would be
perfect for you if you have no classroom. Colored pencils, paper,
permanent thin pens, maybe a few thin colored permanent markers, and
you've got it! I gave my kids a template of the outline of a mummy case
just to get them to size it right. (Friendly plastic shrinks a LOT when
you bake it.) I think ours were about 5 inches tall, maybe 1.5 or 1.75
inches wide at the shoulders and the base. I showed them how long to
make them, but I let each kid design their own pedestal style base so
they would not all look alike. On paper templates, they designed
everything they wanted to put into their mummy case...heiroglyphics,
symbols, pattern, hair ornamentation (stripes and the bands at the
bottom with gold, and so on.), necklaces, faces in egyptian style, and
so on. Once they had the 5" tall model the way they wanted it, they
laid their friendly plastic sheet on top of it and traced over their
design with extrafine permanent sharpie. Prismacolors worked great on
these to color them. We also used the black skinny sharpie and red
skinny sharpies to color them. Following the coloring, they cut them
out. We glued pinbacks on the back of them with silicone glue. I gave
each kid a silk cord, and they could wear them as pendants, strung
through the pinback (which was glued on verically) or they could wear
them as pins. If you made them a little smaller, they could be cute
dangle earrings for mom.
Some years we baked them in the classroom, other years, I sent them home
with instructions for baking and had them bring them back. I suggest
doing it at school. You could use a toaster oven. At home, some of the
kids or parents must have freaked out when they curled up in the baking
process. IF you leave them alone, they will flatten out totally when
they are finished baking. I think we baked them at 350, but you had
best test one to be sure if you do this.
