We loved learning about ancient Greek pottery.

We completed several projects to learn about Greek vases.

We recently traveled to Greece and saw many beautiful examples of Greek pottery with all sorts of designs, shapes, and colors.

We loved the artwork of owls, octopuses, wrestlers, and more!

The handles on some of these vases are very ornate.

We loved reading about the different uses for the pottery based on their shapes.

First, we designed a vase on regular paper.

Tori was very particular about her geometric designs.

Katie loves any and all art projects.

We cut out paper vases with our designs.

We got the inspiration for our scratch vases here.

We practiced on the scraps of scratch paper to see how to use it since it’s a new concept.

Then we cut out colored scratch paper in a vase shape and made designs on the vases.

Our final project was to make actual vases!

I gathered the materials for our Papier Mâché vases project.

(We also have a fresco art project coming up!)

I collected free newspapers, balloons, tape, and cardboard for the bases, tops, and handles.

The girls cut strips of newspaper.

I made the glue and we covered the balloons and cardboard pieces with strips of newspaper.

Papier-Mâché Recipe:

• 1 part flour to 5 parts water
• Boil about 3 minutes and let cool

I laid out newspapers to collect drips and we used our art trays to keep the vases steady. I poured the glue into an aluminum pan.

Notice there are no pictures of the actual Papier-Mâché-ing.

It was so sticky and messy that we had to take showers and I had to mop the floor twice, even with the newspapers and trays catching most of it.

It took a looooong time for the bases to dry completely.

Then, we painted the vases a solid color!

We used tubes of acrylic paint – mostly black, orange, brown, red, and white to be more authentic.

We added fun details in another color like the vases we learned about: people, animals, geometric shapes.

Our completed vases!

We had lots of fun learning about Greek pottery and creating our vases.

Resources:

• Papier-mâché
• Balloons
• Rainbow Magic Scratch Off Paper
• Acrylic Paint
• Plastic Trays

You might also like:

• Our Greece Itinerary
• Eating Our Way Through Greece
• 2 Days in Thessaloniki
• A Weekend in Athens, Greece