Kids' Ancient Egyptian Headdress and Collar

My friend and I are the craft ladies for VBS at our church this year. The curriculum is from Answers in Genesis, always full of good stuff! Click on their 'Media' tab and go to their 'Video on Demand.' There you will find great video clips you can use with your family, friends, and Sunday School class.

The theme for this week's VBS has been 'craftsmen of ancient Egypt.' Today's craftsman is the goldsmith. We took a little diversion from the assigned craft.  Instead of going with the suggestion in the teacher's manual, we decided to have the kids make Egyptian collars and Headdresses, complete with gold band and gold snakey snake!

First stop was Goodwill, to look for cheap but striped flat sheets. After running them through the washer and dryer, we cut them into squares 29" x 29" (This was guess work.)

Then, I just happened to have a gold picnic table cloth (shiny on one side, flannel on the other) that I had once purchased at Target or Walmart for no more than $5. I cut it into 2" x 25" strips.

Next, 'snakes' for the headdresses were made by tearing about 11 inch sheets of heavy aluminum foil, then rolling each diagonally and squeezing out a little snake head, then twisting the body and making it pointy at the end. After that, the snakes were moved to the floor of the garage where I spray painted them with gold automotive paint. I made certain that the gold would dry completely and not come off on little (or big) hands!

Snakes were wrapped around the gold headband in front and secured by squeezing the foil, or with two staples. After all, the staples will never touch the child's head, for the striped fabric will go on first.

I happened to have some heavy brushed cotton, navy blue, in my stash (Don't we all have a stash of fabric??!) and also another geometric print. Anything would probably work for this, as long as you cut geometric shapes for the kids to use.  I cut a pattern out of cardboard. The collar is about 15 inches across.

Use some contrasting color of like fabric to cut triangles. With a little leftover fabric from the gold tablecloth, I cut tiny squares that the kids could use to decorate their collars. Using Tacky Glue, the kids decorated their collars.

Cut a slit in the corner of each side of the collar and have the kids string either leather or cotton through each slit so they can tie the collars on.

The headdress fabric is placed on the head, the gold band and snake wrapped around the head, then stapled. (NOT to the kid's head). ;-) Cut excess gold fabric from the head band.

There! That's it!  Don't they look cute!!  :-) We had 30 kids who participated, but it's not easy to get 30 ancient Egyptians to assemble for a photo.

This post is linked to We Did It Wednesday

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