Gingercake

Heart Monster Craft

Everytime I go in for a class party, I am so grateful and amazed at the job that elementary school teachers accomplish everyday.  When you do the craft at these parties, you wonder how these women and men get anything done!  The kids are fun and awesome but the range in their ability to listen and understand is pretty broad- even on a super simple craft like the one I am about to share with you.  Teachers, I salute you yet again!

I like this because you can share it with kids who are a little older ( 7 & 8 year olds) but with help, little ones can do it too.  It is also great for boys and girls alike.  And I like that the materials are super simple and all found at my local dollar store.  Cool.  Also, your kids can spend some time playing with them after school while you chill and have a glass of wine after dealing with making crafts with 20 kids all amped up on valentine sugar.  Very Cool.

This is pretty simple so I am just going to give you an easy photo tutorial.

First, the materials~

To make this with just a few kids, they can cut out the heart, glue the googly eyes on, etc.  To make this with 20 kids in a short amount of time (like 7 very hurried minutes of a 20 minute class party), I prepped  quite a bit before I went in.  

I cut out all the hearts (in a variety of colors so they could choose), I glued the googly eyes to the styrofoam balls so they wouldn't have to wait for glue to dry, and I prepared all the TP rolls by cutting them in half and cutting out the finger circles.

The kids chose their pipe cleaner (and cut it in half) chose their googly eyes, chose their hearts, and drew the mouth and stuck on the teeth. And, of course, they assembled the monsters themselves!

I love the rainbow of teeth on this one...

Many of them decided to use the 2nd half of the pipe cleaner to make arms.  Very cute!  

The only thing about this craft with a class party is that you have to have 20+ TP rolls!  I was collecting them since I knew I wanted to do some kind of craft with them.  To reach 20, I had to cut paper towels rolls down to size and they were not as nice to use as the actual Toilet Paper rolls.  The kids did not notice at all though!

Hopefully you may find some use of this tutorial for doing some easy crafting with your kids!  

Special Sculpture

First!!  Sorry for the delay about the winner.  The winner of the vintage sheets bundle is...

That sounds adorable!  Congratulations GS.  I would love to see a patchwork animal from vintage sheets.

Over the past few weeks my oldest daughter Elsie has been having a special program at school.  Her art teacher, Ms. Henry raised funds outside of the school to bring an artist to the school to create a lifesize sculture of one the students.  His name is Dave Poulin.  We had such an amazing experience with him.

I visited 2 class sessions with "Artist Dave" and brought Cal with me.  The 3 week program begins with students in grades 3-6 submitting stories (the theme was Freedom since we live in Freeport, PA) on which to base the look of the sculpture.  The student whose story is chosen gets to be the model for the sculpture.  The story of this sculture is that a girl is at a birthday party and she is holding a big bunch of balloons.  The balloons begin to lift her up into the air and she is surprised but also excited.  This is her idea of what freedom feels like.

The kids helped the artist by adding clay to the sculpture.  The older kids do a little more with shaping but for the 2nd graders (Elsie's class), the sessions were about thinking creatively and pushing yourself to solve problems.  He gave each student and visitor a small chunk of clay and he would give us assignments about shaping the clay with eyes open and then shaping with eyes closed.  It was wonderful to see all the kids concentrating so hard and really getting into the experience.

Above was Elsie's favorite part.  On their last session with him, he had a sculture of a head without ears, nose, eyes or mouth.  He divided into groups and each child was assigned a part of the face to add.  

This head was separate from the main sculture.  Elsie did ears.

Cal and I were also assigned face parts...

After all this scupting, we smooshed up our face parts and added them to the main sculture.

The sculpture was completed last Friday and Artist Dave (as Elsie called him) took the whole piece back to his studio in Jamestown, NY.  There he will cast the clay part and using real balloons, in plaster.  From there he will create a bronze casting that will be returned to our school in the Spring.  The process of going from the clay to the bronze is truly amazing.  Here is the link to his process.

This was so fun and I was so proud of our little school for coming together and  bringing this artist to rural Western PA.  It wasn't cheap!  But to have this experience and to have a beautiful bronze statue at their school is truly something special.  Elsie loves all things art but it was also easy to see that all the students were equally inspired and had a great time learning with this project!