We started these as a fun, end-of-the-year project to wrap up our economics unit. We wanted something that would help them remember not only one of the bigger units in third grade, but also what they were like as third graders, so rather than decorating them like a pig, we decided to decorate them like their own faces.
We learned A LOT about paper mache!
Here are a few of the highlights:
1. For the flour and water mixture, it does not need to be very thick. Too thick and it won't dry. Think of a latte rather than a milkshake.
2. When setting them outside to dry, be careful not to set them outside too long in the hot sun--the heat will make the molecules in the balloons expand and the balloons will pop. I had my kids leave theirs inside over night, and they were mostly dry the next day. Not completely, but enough to start the next layer. If you set them outside, 20 minutes should be plenty, depending on the weather.
3. It is VERY messy. Students should wear an old shirt or apron. Put lots of drop cloths on the floor. buy extra baby wipes to wipe up afterwards.
4. Your final layer (which was our 3rd layer) should be white copy paper. This makes it easier to paint afterwards.
5. While letting them dry outside, we set them in cardboard crates that the milk gets shipped to us in. There were plenty in the cafeteria, and two balloons fit in each crate. The sides of the crate helped the balloons not to fly away, as once they are dry they are pretty light. We labeled the crate with the students names.
Once they were dry, I spray painted them all a basic skin tone. It took two cans of paint and about 20 minutes. I set them out in their crates to dry and 10 minutes later... ta-da! One can was almond colored (a little lighter) and one was a camouflage tan. I also already had a dark brown can of spray paint on hand, so it worked out great!
Next, we got out the mirrors and inspected our ears. We discussed the proportion of our facial features. If you split your face into thirds, your ears take up the middle third-they are the same height as your nose! My students were surprised by this. Funny how we miss such details on something we look at every day! They drew their ears out and while they were at specials, I used an exacto knife to cut them out. I folded them forward and this made the balloon look a lot more like a human face, rather than an alien! This also provides a way for students to slip their money out when they want it. While I had the exacto knife out, I cut a slot in the back for them to put their money in.
These ears are cut out but not yet folded forward. See how it looks like an alien!?
A little close together, but it gives you the idea of how I cut and folded them.
Next we drew out the faces. Again. The nose should be the same height, and in line with, your ears. Also, the width of your eye, is the same size as the space in between your eyes. This helped students be able to draw their faces pretty proportionately. Students really struggled on the nose, so we practiced a few different ways to draw noses. One of the other third grade teachers, hearing about how my class had a hard time, decided to mold her noses out of modeling clay, then glued it onto their paper mache after the first layer. After that, they just put the rest of the paper mache over the nose. I will definitely be trying this out next year!
Here are some samples of student faces after they painted them! It really didn't take much paint at all since I had already spray painted the base coat. The painting took them about 30 minutes.
Finally we added hair. Hair definitely made it look less alien like. Also the trick was the bring the hair further down on the forehead.
This is the same head, just with about an inch more of hair in front on the second one. It made it look a lot lot better!
I had pre cut a lot of strands of yarn ahead of time by rolling the yarn around the back of a chair and just cutting up each side. I had to cut more as the students worked but I was able to keep up pretty easily. Students also helped to cut. We used about 3/4 of a ball of yellow yarn and 3/4 the ball of brown yarn and about 1/2 of the black. They layered the hair on string by string. Some just threw it on top, but the end result wasn't quite as nice.
While we were putting on the hair, one of my boys thought his head was beginning to look like Miley Cyrus, and couldn't figure out how to fix it. I gave him back a mirror and he figured out he just needed to add some bangs. By the end he was on his way to looking more like him!
One last thing! The necks are made out of a pool noodle. I was able to get 17 necks out of just one noodle. Make sure to get the extra wide ones. We cut the noodle in a parallelogram shape. Slanted on the top so that the back is taller, this allows the head to rest nicely on it. On the bottom, in order to balance out the weight of the head, I cut it so that the front was a little bit longer than the back. This allowed the head to stand up on its own! I hot glued it to the balloon head and then used a tan colored duct-tape to tape them on more securely. This also colored over the orange noodle. Tomorrow we will add a strip of a different colored duct tape along the bottom to become a shirt collar. Then we'll be done!
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