History is Alive :: Canopic Jars

A couple of weeks ago we hit ancient Egypt in our history study. A fun craft to help the littles understand mummification with out mummifying a chicken *ahem* was to make canopic jars. For anyone that doesn't remember their ancient Egyptian history, canopic jars were the jars the internal organs were put during the mummification process. The tops of the jars were decorated with images of gods who were thought to protect the organs for the dead dude - you know since he'd need them again when he got to where he was going.

Since I did all my organization this summer I knew I would need a pickle jar for each of my kiddos. We eat quite a lot of pickles so I wasn't too worried but I did have to transfer the last jar's worth to a ziplock bag to get a set of four!

The directions in the activity book were great! So I gathered my supplies...

...and set up my students at the table to rip newspaper.

Once we had a nice pulp...

We grabbed handfuls, mounding and shaping the tops to our jars.

I had pretty wet pulp so we tried to squeeze each  handful as much as possible but still ended up with some soggy creations. I set the jars up in the laundry room to dry...which took two weeks! Talk about needing patience. Actually though the kids were just as interested in watching the drying processes as they were the making.

After the drying time we got out our paints and decorated our jars.

 (#4 had dressed up for his Halloween party at speech school that morning, eyes painted on his forehead so he'd have eight eyes like any good spider.)

#1 is using hers as money storage, #2 for treasures he finds, #3 has some marbles and golf balls in his and #4 got gypped with the jar with a lid that doesn't open (grandma recycled it when she was visiting before this whole craft project started) and so his is displayed on the school shelves.