The HandsOn Approach to Roman Art and Architecture

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The Hands-On Approach to Roman Art and
Architecture

• A mosaic of disciplines

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Why should we learn it?
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How are these for reasons?
Roman influences on our present day architecture
Appreciation and understanding of modern art and
its evolution

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Classical Mosaic
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M C Escher
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Hold up! Were forgetting the most important
reason of all!
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FOOD!

• As educators, we know the way to a childs mind
  is through his/her stomach ?

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Roman art and architecture, as they relate to
core subjects.

• Mosaics
• Language Arts
• History
• Temples
• Math/Geometry
• Roman Villae
• Science

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but remember,
its ultimately up to you how you tie in your
different lessons.
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Mosaics!
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Examples of mosaics
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What you can expect from your students

• Something less detailed, and a lot more edible ?
• Spelling out words in mosaics makes for a good
  activityits not as difficult!

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Shh! (Heres where you can sneak in a tasty
Language Arts lesson!)
?
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What you need to make a mosaic

• Base
• Mortar
• Tesserae

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Steps

• Take your graham cracker and arrange it in
  whatever shape/size you want
• Spread on the marshmallow cream (your adhesive
  agent)
• Have your students place down fruity pebble
  cereal pieces in a pattern to form words or
  pictures.

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Language Arts

• Prep base with the marshmallow cream
• Teach alliteration, using Cave Canem as an
  example.

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• Instruct the students to make a mosaic of their
  favorite animal and then have them construct
  silly phrases showing alliteration.
• Ex Love Lions, Save Seals, Dig Dogs, Catch Cats,
  Mean Monkeys

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Another mosaic idea
How about using mosaics to help students review
for quizzes and tests in other subjects?
Heres how
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Preparation

• Draw several large pictures (however many you
  draw will be the number of teams into which you
  will divide the class)

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Preparation cont.

• Cut the pictures up into identically shaped
  pieces (keep the order for now! These will be
  your tesserae)

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Preparation cont.

• Write one review question in the back of each
  tessera

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Preparation cont.

• Trace the shapes onto a cardboard base with
  corresponding answers (order is essential if you
  want your mosaics to resemble the pictures you
  had drawn earlier!)

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Let the games begin!

• Divide class into teams
• Make sure the tesserae for each team are mixed up
  well
• Have a student pick out a random tessera and read
  the question aloud (it can be a science, history,
  or math problem)
• Instruct the student to match his piece to an
  answer on the cardboard base.
• Whichever teams mosaic is completed first, wins!

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Roman Temples
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Lets make gingerbread temples!
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You can either make one or several
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The lesson

• Discuss the Pantheon in Rome
• Ask the kids what they think the structure was
  used for and why?
• Talk about the different architectural elements
• Frieze, triglyfs, pediment, stylobate, columns,
  etc.

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For the younger kids

• The gingerbread temple lesson can offer some
  terrific practice with shapes
• E.g. square, triangle, rectangle, cylinder,
  trapezoid, etc

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Demonstration Time!
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Roman Villae
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Archaeology Project

• Students get to be archaeologists!

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The lesson

• Have the students excavate Pompeii
• Students are presented with a pan of dirt
  (oreo/graham cracker crumbs)
• Inside they will find an intact graham cracker
  (the villa) and several gummi bears (plaster
  molds of Vesuvius victims)

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Your Roman villa template
Cut out the black lines on an index card with an
X-acto knife. It will take some effort, but the
outcome will be worth it!
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Frosting!

• Ask the students to pair up and frost a graham
  cracker.

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The Mystery

• As archaeologists, your students must determine
  the functions of the different rooms
• Atrium, culina, cubiculum, triclinium, hortus
• For words like culina and hortus, give them hints
  with derivatives like culinary and
  horticulture.
• Hand out a sheet of paper with the floor plan of
  a Roman villa and ask them to match the rooms to
  the correct Latin words.

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While theyre trying to match up the rooms

• Go around to each pairs frosted graham cracker
  and gently place the template u had prepared
  earlier onto the frosting.
• Caveat the frosting might be wet so start on the
  ones that have been air drying the longest.
• Sprinkle on fine sprinkles (the kind typically
  used on Christmas cookies work best)
• Peel away the template and the floor plan should
  now be on the graham cracker!

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Now a lesson on some Latin!

• Once you share with the class the correct names
  of the rooms, present simple Latin sentences like
  Pater est in atrio (father is in the atrium).
  Have the kids designate one gummy bear from the
  pan as the pater and the other as the mater
  (mother)

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now for the FUN ?

• Do this for a few rounds and then make sure the
  gummy bears end up on opposite ends by the end of
  the activity.
• Instruct the partners to break their graham
  cracker down the middle and enjoy their half of
  the archeological find!