Initially I planned to use fruit to make prints in this session. But on rethinking the cost and waste, and the nice supply I had of foam stamps change was in order. Each table was set up with egg carton with 5 colors of tempera paint and a generous handful of small and medium stamps, paint brushes and wet rags.
We used heavy paper and off they went. We painted the stamps using a small brush as it make the stamping with paint neater, especially for younger kids. The quiet in the room as everyone concentrated on the work was notable. Great results too.
This was messy, it was gooey and they bowls turned out well for everyone. In making mache a number of times over the last year, I think we finally have the formula down. I shredded cups of white packing paper and used the blender to pulp it, then drained it and mixed the pulp with a few cups of commercial mache mix and 2 bottles of school glue. It was still a little wetter than we wanted but any dryer and it was hard to work with.
We first put plastic wrap over a small plastic container then damped some tissue paper strips and covered them with the colored mache mix. I gave every table a bowl of colored paper shred to use at the end to decorate the bowl on the outside. We used nylon netting to work with the final shapping so the mache did not stick to everyone's hands. It worked really well. Every project went home with their net so if any slippage occured on the way home it could easily be reshaped. In a few days they will be dry and can be lifted off the plastic container and used for dry items.
We started today with a group project using donated and recyclable materials --paper tubes, cardboard boxes, gift wrap, and lots of streamers. We created the cages for the animals in the circus to be made later in the day. I cut large rectangular boxes about 4" high for the tops and bottoms and got gift wrap tubes for the uprights. The kids glued them into the corners then made bars for the cages from streamers and decorated the boxes with the paper. A sign and they were done. Now who gets to take them home?
Our second project was to take coffee cans and a variety of papers, yarns and other bits and create the animals for the cages. We created lions, tigers, elephants, bears, and horses. I heard the horses were getting a bit long in the face (piggish) at one point but in the end all the animals turned out great and were exhibited briefly in their cages.
I was afraid our last project would be a bit challenging but everyone did great creating wire sculptures of the performers and other circus items for their big top. Kathryn lead this one and I think her examples were the biggest creations of all.
I will have slide shows of our entire day ready soon to share.
Sometimes a project is just meant to be! This one looked attractive and had the potential for creativity so I scheduled it. What a great plan. We made the watercolor pieces earlier in the week then assembled our collage/paper sculpture of a sunburst adding paper curls and the results were definitely beyond what I expected. The kids liked doing the project and taught each other to curl paper and helped hold components so they would adhere to the paper.
We moved on to a sculpture in a can AKA Calder that is a lot of fun to do. We used tuna/cat food cans as a base with a styrofoam insert and clay over the top to seal it. We then created the sculpture from crazy straws, chenille stems, pompoms, beads and foam core cutouts.
Another project to complete was our paper lantern flying fish. This one kind of got away from us a little as we worked out the best way for everyone to create the fins and faces but in the end everyone had a fish and a huge smile. It was not as important to the kids that the fins be stiff as it was to the designer. It was a lot more hassle to attach the tissue to the thicker paper than to have fins that were a bit more loose. The loosest tail fin made of 4 pieces of tissue and no base paper actually looked wonderful and attached easily to the frame.
Doing water colors with spray bottles is really a lot more fun but the bottles present their own dilema: what to spray, your paper or your table mate? We used 4 sections of watercolor paper to create the basis for our sunburst collage. The campers wrote something about sunshine on the long one then painted all of them with a combination of yellow, orange and red and set them aside to dry. It was fun to see what happened when the painted areas were resprayed and how the paint ran as the papers were tipped.
The second project was our flying fish. We used a paper lantern as a base and made fins and all the details on the fish from tissue paper and paper crimp. Some are done but most still need a few finishing touches.
We started this week off with 2 butterfly projects that really turned out well. We had a set of foam butterflies in a kit, a little hard to assemble but in the end a pretty good project. The 2 part butterflies gave us a bit more room to get creative. Students were encouraged to use the books on butterflies as a resource and create the butterflies by drawing, coloring and/or collaging them. Lots of great projects!
Our second project was to make a paper mache bowl from a berry box. This is by far the messiest mache I have ever worked with. We colored it in the mix and had them pat it onto the boxes so they could dry to be decorated on Friday. Lots of ewe..yuck--was heard.
The last project was one of optics using domed glass beads and stickers to examine which color and size magnifies more and if using a spacer alters the image more. They also got to have an old ribbon marble to examine.
They really used their imaginations on this one! This project is a take off on one of the Calder sculptures I worked with earlier in the summer. Each participant was given a tuna/cat food can with styrofoam inserted into it, an array of chenille stems, fun foam shapes, pom poms, beads and foam core shapes. It was interesting to see what they created and hear their descriptions. Some were mobile and one was very large--needed a straw to keep the shape of it.
Initially I planned to use fruit to make prints in this session. But on rethinking the cost and waste, and the nice supply I had of foam stamps change was in order. Each table was set up with egg carton with 5 colors of tempera paint and a generous handful of small and medium stamps, paint brushes and wet rags. 
