Art: Making Greek Masks

At CoOp #12, our goal was to create masks out of paper mache, like the Greeks used to both wear and decorate their theater walls with. We combined two recipes to make our paste which included flour, water, glue and table salt. The children used torn strips of newspaper from old editions of our Catholic weekly, and dipped their strips into the paste. They learned to use their fingers to smooth the paste along the entire strip and then to let the excess paste drop back into the bucket underneath. These strips were then laid on one at a time over a balloon inflated to about the size of a child's head! The children were encouraged to cover only half of the balloon, so that a "mask " would truly be created. We didn't worry about leaving air holes in our project, those will be cut into them next time we gather.

We discussed the concept of "Complimentarity" and it's relationship to Symmetry ( see the Art Handout for CoOp #12, in binders). They were encouraged to try to create a nose, eye brows and lips but with our 30 minute time constraint, most children were able to cover their balloon in a flat layer only and were very happy to achieve that because the balloons wanted to roll! It was only until after our K-1 class was finishing up that we realized that this activity required the Art smocks that we own!!! Many apologies to all the Moms of these students who had laundry to attend to when they got home. We did use smocks for our next two classes which was a tremendous help. This was a VERY messy activity and most of the children really enjoyed it. Thank you to Mrs. Q who helped us by washing the classroom walls afterwards as the drop cloths over the tables and entire floor did not protect the walls that the tables were up against!

We also learned that the wet balloons covered in wet pasty newspaper did not accept the felt tip marker or pen marks with the student owner's name when we tried to label them when finished. In later classes we wrote the child's name on the balloon as they came into the classroom. We placed all of the wet balloons on long tables covered in newspaper to dry until our next meeting when the students will paint them. Mrs. R. has seen them all since they are mostly dry and said that they have turned out well.