It's all Greek to me! 6th Grade Greek Coins

This project is fast and fun and could also be used to explore ancient Rome or modern-day civilizations such as a specific state or country. For this project we used metal tooling foil available from Blick.com, but another teacher I know uses foil paper like this for her elementary students (a less expensive and less dangerous alternative since tooling metal can be a bit sharp for little fingers). I usually buy my tooling foil from Blick by the roll, but didn't see it on their site at this time. If you can afford the tooling metal, I recommend it and use it elsewhere  on my site for a variety of other projects. Students love it!

Finished coin designs were mounted onto mat board,
this helps to add stability to the flimsy metal and makes the pieces look more finished
(I referred to them as their "coin collections.").

Students researched Greek coins and looked at different artifacts and inspiration from ancient Greece and needed to come up with five coin designs. One design needed to have a plant or tree, one design needed to include a face or figure, and the third needed to depict a building. The other two designs were their choice. It is helpful to look at examples of real coins and note that they often include other information such as monetary value, country of origin, and possibly a slogan or motto.

Once the students were happy with their designs they could tool them onto the metal using a dull pencil--this creates a nice relief design. Finished coins were painted with watered-down tempera paint, and once dry, scrubbed lightly with steel wool to create an antique look and help define their designs.

The students had fun designing their own money and learned a great deal about ancient Greece at the same time! ENJOY!

Here's part of the display featuring our finished "coin collections."

What is it with spaceships?!
This student decided to create two modern designs that were not "antiqued"
and a more traditional design. While the students needed to create three designs
inspired by ancient Greece, their final three design choices were up to them.

I really like the "I love art" commemorative coin on the right!

6th Grade Greek Pottery (Traditional and Modern)

While I was doing my long term substitute teaching at Amherst Middle School last spring, I wanted to tie a couple of art lessons to what the students were learning in their other courses. I had missed the Egyptian unit in Social Studies (they covered that before my time), but I was there for their study of ancient Greece. I thought they might like to learn about ancient pottery.

Look at this pot design-how cool is this?!

 I gave them a presentation on Greek pottery (a PowerPoint presentation that introduced styles such as Geometric, Red Figure, Black Figure and White Ground) and I found it helpful to give the students a double-sided graphic organizer that would help them take notes on the presentation. After my presentation, I left the following link open for the students to play around with: Greek Pot Painter from the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. It's an interactive website the students can use to learn more about Greek Pottery.

This double-sided graphic organizer followed my talk
exactly and was easy for the students to fill out
as I went through the slide show.

Students then created two pot designs: one traditional Greek pottery design using traditional pot shapes and imagery and another pot design using a modern pot shape and imagery. The students had lots of fun designing both!

I then showed them how to use oil pastels and watered down tempera paint to make their own scratch boards. When the scratch boards were dry, students could choose to scratch one of their designs into the scratchboard (this is loosely based on sgraffito where potters scratch designs into colored slip). The great thing about doing this project is that the 6th graders took a trip to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts during this time and saw actual Greek pottery on display--they thought that was so cool!

These came out so neat--definitely a keeper!

Here's our Greek Cupboard full of wonderful Greek pottery!

The pot on the right was inspired by Minoan Pottery
(I showed the students the famous Octopus pottery from that region) 

I like how this pot has multiple layers of imagery.

These pots have some unique shapes and designs inspired by nature.

The middle pot shows an alien abduction! So clever!

Some students worked very hard to create detailed imagery
depicting soldiers or mythological beings and then painstakingly
scratched their designs onto the boards. So great!