Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Uncooperative materials + 20 kids working at once = epic fail

Uncooperative cupcakes!
So far our plaster projects were going pretty good, until today.  Today was flustering!  Today was a kink in the hose.  Today did not work.  We tried.  Those fifth graders were working so hard to do their cupcakes that refused to cooperate.  The plaster was drying almost instantly.  I knew it was hot in my room, but my goodness.  They were trying to pour it into the cracks to get it to the bottom and it just did not work.  So I am going to figure out Plan B.  I think first will be a really fun painting lesson to make everyone feel better (me included), which can give me time to regroup and figure out how to make their lesson work.  Because after all, what is art if not learning from mistakes and trying again.  Maybe this was today's real objective!

2 comments:

  1. I tried this same lesson with ceramic clay w/ 4th & 5th graders and it was pretty successful. We used pinch pot skills to create the rounded cupcake top and did the bottom separate and then rolled them across corrugated cardboard ridges for "cupcake paper". That gave us a cupcake shaped box. We then tempera painted them using tints for pastel-y frosting colors. If you have access to clay, this is a neat way to do this (we talked about artist Wayne Thibaud). You could also use air dry clay. Thought I'd share since I got the idea from someone else! Something to try if you do cupcakes again. I hate it when lessons fail like that!!!

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  2. Thanks! I am going to try again. I am using it as a teachable moment, but I ordered some plast-r-craft strips to finish out the remaining projects.

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