Project FAIL

If I were to make a list of the Top 10 Disadvantages to Homeschooling,  papier-mâché would probably make the top of the list.

I think it's become accepted that all American children have the inalienable right to make a papier-mâché project at some point in their childhood, and since my kids do not have access to the well-stocked art room manned by the unflagging, ever-creative art teacher, the task of providing the experience falls to me.  So.... since it was suggested in our Learning Calendar for this month that we do one of these projects, I gamely complied.

And, man was it messy!

 We got the flour-water mixture everywhere!  What a pain it was to clean off of all the surfaces.  Pete came home in the middle of the disorderly process, and before he even had time to sigh in exasperation, I assured him, "Don't worry -- we are never doing this again!"

(Later, after he had spent a considerable amount of time scrubbing out the pot we had used, he reminded me of my promise.)

The kids had fun... why wouldn't they?  And by the time we had finished with the first stage, I was able to eke out a smile of my own -- since the hard part was now over, I figured...

Then, a couple of days later, we excitedly popped the balloon that was the basis of our structure, and the kids ooh-ed and ahh-ed at how the shape still stayed formed.  We had decided to make it into a hot air balloon, so after a lot of contemplation and negotiations about design (stripes?  solid color?  horizontal or vertical orientation?) and color (red-and-yellow?  blue-and-yellow?  red-and-blue?), they finally arrived at a conclusion:  just put a bunch of paint on it.

(Extreme mess #2)

At this point, I am assuming all the expert papier-mâché-ers would gasp in alarm because, as we soon discovered, we had followed the steps in an incorrect order.  Apparently we should have painted before we popped the balloon!  Once the shape became all wet again with the paint, this is what happened:

So, our big hot air balloon never even got off the ground before its pathetic demise.

The moral of the story, then, is to paint the structure before you pop the balloon.

Or, actually, I think the real moral of the story is don't ever do a papier-mâché project at home.  At least at our home.  I wish the public schools would just let my kids come for art class!

If you've never...

... colored on paper with crayons on a hot baking tray, you're missing out!

The kids (and I, especially!) had a fun time doing this over our Christmas break.  I had heard about it on another person's web site (can't remember who now), and decided to give it a try.   I highly recommend this activity.

Just heat up the baking sheets in the oven (about 200 degrees or so), then take them out and give the color-ers an oven mitt so they don't burn themselves.  The crayons melt right on the paper so they glide much more smoothly than normal.  I love how bright the colors get!

Guess what the art project was this day...

My kids had fun making themselves (out of a roll of that cheap brown paper you can get at home improvement stores). 

I saw a suggestion to make 2 cut-outs per person, one for the front and one for the back, and then staple them together, stuffing old newspapers in between.  That idea sounded good  (although I had images of the kids using their paper-people as Taekwondo dummies.... and then images of brown paper and newspapers strewn all over the floor)  but we didn't do it.  The amount of effort it took to coordinate all 3 of them in their tracing, cutting, and coloring was more than enough for me.  I was too tired at the end to try and double all that effort!

So our characters are flat and still -- unlike the characters who made them.

For someone who has more storage space than I do, I think this would be a fun thing to do each year, and then keep to show the the kids as they grow.