Making Papyrus with Kids Tutorial

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To get hands-on in our learning about Ancient Egypt this year, we made our own papyrus scroll.
Sort of....
Here's what we did:
I cut some brown mailing paper into two 12x12 squares.

To prep the base of your papyrus, fold one piece in half.

Then cut straight lines from the folded side towards the open end every 1 to 1.5". Do NOT cut all the way through. Stop each line about 1" from the edge.

This is what the base piece will look like after you cut straight lines all along.

Take your second piece of 12x12 paper and cut it into 1 to 1.5" strips. These you cut all the way.

You can see that the loose strips are about the same length as the base piece.

When all the strips and the base piece are cut, start weaving one strip at a time through the base. Alternate each strip's under/over pattern on the base.

I put a cup of water and a tablespoon of white glue into the base of a broiler pan and mixed it to make a decoupage.

Gently soak the papyrus in the glue mixture.

When the whole piece is saturated, lay it on freezer paper or wax paper to dry.
We added some grass blades to add texture.

Let it dry overnight and then decorate!

See more of what we did with our papyrus here.