As I explained last week in my blog I was planning on doing papier mache with my sweet little class of 17 Kindergarteners this past week. Well, low and behold the day arrived. We had a field trip on Wednesday to the farm which was so fun, but exhausting. It was very hot, no breeze, and hard to find shade so needless to say I slightly regretted planning on doing papier mache the very next day! But, it could not have worked out better! I have an amazing parent who is super artistic and full of ideas and willing to help! Here was a little break down of how the papier mache came to be a success:)
2 weeks ago I sent out an email requesting all parents send in 1 Sunday newspaper to supply our strips for papier mache. Live and learn, I did not request that they pre-cut them into strips so that became my job.
Last week every night from Mon-Wed I sat and cut strips for about an hour. Derrick also helped me a ton with cutting. Doesn't seem like it would be hard but let me tell you, it SUCKED! In the end I came up with a huge paper bag filled to the top with strips of newspaper (and no... we did not use even close to all of them. We used about a 1/4 of the strips which means I did 3/4 extra work!)
I got to school early (like usual, around 6:16/6:20am) to make up the paste and blow up 17 balloons. For the paste I used the good ol' fashioned recipe of equal parts flour and water until it had the right consistency. I filled 5 small bins about half way with the mixture and filled 5 other small bins with paper strips.
We went to the library from 8:30-9 and my parent helper, Katie, was going to set everything up for while we were at library. And boy did she:) She brought 2 large folding tables, covered them with orange plastic table cloths, put down a painting tarp underneath to prevent any mess on the outside patio, put out all of the bins and then she was SO SMART! She brought 17 little plastic bowls to put the balloons in rather than taping them down. This also allowed for the students to only papier mache the top 3/4 of the balloon and left the bottom part plain. This way when I pop the balloon the "lid" is already off and they have a bowl - which is what I was turning them into. Little pumpkin bowls to put their treats in this week after our costume parade. Katie even brought pumpkin balloons to decorate!
When we got back at 9 she was ready for us. She took charge and showed everyone what to do and they got started. It was so funny to see all of them so scared of getting messy! Usually I have to remind to not use too much of something, but now I was telling them the opposite! It took us about an hour and a half to papier mache our balloons and at the end Katie and I were just going around, putting our hands into the mixture and scooping out globs of the glue, plopping it on the top, and smothering the paper down. The kids had so much fun getting messy and did such an awesome job with it!
We then carried them inside and put them on newspaper to dry. Some of them were soooo goopy that throughout the day the newspaper underneath was even getting goopy from it dripping down the balloon, down the bowl, and onto the other newspaper. Mission accomplished:) So many times I heard them say 'this is so awesome' or 'this is the best art project ever'!. That reminded me that I made a great choice! Other parents and teachers walked around too and thought it was so neat what we were doing that although it was messy and I had papier mache 'hightlights' at the end of the day, it was so worth it! Besides, it was just flour and water and it washed and cleaned up so easily!!! I plan to post pictures but I want to fuzz out the kids faces so look for the pics to come:) And for anyone who has kids -- this is a must art project at some point in their lives!!
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