Paper Mashé Ester Eggs

Apr 4, 2017

4 min read

Easter is fast approaching and I decided to take this holiday as an opportunity to introduce the students to paper mashé! As a child I always loved working with paper mashé, it was messy, its felt good in my fingers, it didn't have to be precise, it was unbreakable, and it was just all around fun! I have been wanting to try doing a paper mashé activity with a class for a long time and finally decided it was time to give it a shot! Easter eggs presented the perfect opportunity as they are not too big for a first time experience, and they are very bright and open to creativity.

Materials:

- I used water balloons for the mold base as they were the perfect egg shape opposed to normal balloons which were perfect circles when I blew them up to the size I wanted.

- For the paper mashé paste I used the proportions 2/3 glue to 1/3 water, but I honestly I didn't measure it, I just eye balled it and added more glue or water if I felt I needed it to get to the right consistency.

- We used newspaper stripes for the paper which I just ripped going with the grain of the paper. I tried to keep the strips under 1 inch wide and about 5 inches long. I found the thinner the strips the less bumps you have to worry about smoothing over.

- We used medium sized buckets (the ones from McDonalds Happy Meals were the perfect size!) to put the paper mashé mix in

- I provided the students with sponge glue brushes to apply the paper mashé paste

- Finally, back when I did the Polar Bear Face activity with the students, I cut the bottoms off Styrofoam cups for the noses, so I had the rest of the other half of the cups laying around my house. I realized they were the perfect size and shape for a stand to rest the balloons on as they work on them and for while they dry. It worked well to keep the balloon from rolling around without the students having to hold them (though some preferred to), keep them from sticking to the table, rolling on the floor, picking up other things from the table, and drying to a paper towel or the table when we left them.

I started out explaining to the students to use the glue brush to apply the paper mashé paste, but as the students were doing the art, several of them expressed they just wanted to use their hands. I told them that they could if they wanted to, I made my example without using the brushes. I showed these students how to dip the news paper and squeeze the excess paste off. As more students saw these students doing it, more wanted to use that method instead. The truth is it does work better because it guarantees that the whole stripe is saturated in the paste!

When it came time the students were beginning to finish, I checked over each egg to make sure there wasn't too many bits sticking up and that the egg was wet to ensure it stayed together. Several students needed to apply a lot more glue and when I told them they proceeded to only put on a little bit. When they did this, I used my hands to take a small scoop of the paste and put it onto their egg and told them to spread that around to cover the whole egg. When some of the students saw me do this they wanted to try it too. These students did exactly what I did, grabbed some of the paste and put it on their egg. I guess after that they decided they're hands were already messy so they started to spread it around their egg with their hands like they were giving it a massage, adding more paste as they saw fit. It was really funny to see because at one point, there was an entire group who were done their eggs but where just sitting around their table massaging them. They seemed so at peace, I guess the soft slippery feeling was a good therapeutic for their senses. And the best part? This made their eggs perfectly smooth! It saturated and flattened all the bumps out of their eggs, I only wish I had thought of it! Well, these guys taught me something for next time!

Next week the students will be adding their second coat and on Friday we being painting!

Here are some shots from the day. Unfortunately I did not get any of the students "massaging" their eggs as by this point my hands were just as dirty as theirs, but I will try to get them next week as I think I will be able to let them do it more independently as they are little experts at it now!