miss cleo

Katie's class has been studying Rome, and to show what they've learned, they were to choose a related topic and do some type of presentation, along with a written report. This was her first time to pull something like this together and she really enjoyed it. She did some research on the internet and we checked out books from the library.

For her presentation, she opted to write a skit and present it to her class. After seeing a cowboy rendition of The Elves and the Shoemaker at the Magik Theater, we came up with the idea to do "If Cleopatra Lived in Texas". It was pretty simple once she had her written report complete - we just translated everything we could into old west slang... very much a family effort.

Also, she wanted to include some of her classmates in the skit, so the story was written so that there were exactly enough characters to match the number of students (& teacher) in her class. For example: instead of Ptolemy IV and Ptolemy V, she had Ptolemy Matthew and Ptolemy Aaron. It literally pulled the students into her dialogue because they were all listening for their own name.

Her costume was fun to create. She wanted to have a toga/tunic to wear to the end of unit Roman feast later that week anyway, so all we had to do was accessorize. We used a body pillow case, stick-on gems, gold puffy paint, purple ribbon and gold robe to complete the dress. Instead of a crown, she wore a royal cowboy hat (with purple and gold trim). We couldn't find a Cleopatra wig, so I hot glued black ribbon around the inside of her hat so it would hang down like hair. We had a pair of suede boots in the dress up box that we accented with the gold puffy paint. And, of course, gold bracelets up her arm.

Her other props included a rubber snake (in Texas, she was not bitten by an asp, it was a rattlesnake) and a buck skin (in Texas, she was not rolled up in a fancy rug to be carried to Caeser, she was rolled up in a buck skin). It was a hoot!

I didn't get very good pics because I was trying to video at the same time. It's certainly a memory! We'll hold on to the dress for future toga parties!