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Exploring the creative arts
This month we've been exploring a new form of creative arts, linking to our current group planning.
We've been exploring the art of paper mache. To start this process, we blew up five balloons then filled up a bowl of water and sprinkled in some glue powder and mixed it all together with a big wooden spoon. Once the glue was ready, we headed outside to rip up bits of newspaper to dip in the glue and stick on the balloon. During this part of the process, we talked about the feel of the slimy glue on your hands as well as the end goal of this part of the process which was hiding all the glue with the newspaper. Once each balloon was hidden away, we popped the balloons up to dry for a few days. Once the balloons we dry we got them down from their drying spot and talked about how hard the balloons were now that the glue had dried. Next step now they were dry was to use the glue again to paste white paper over the news print and hang the balloons back up to dry. After a few more days of drying, we got the balloons back down for the next step. Now comes the decorating stage. First, we popped the balloon inside of the paper shell we had created and started to paint the balloons all sorts of different colours. After this the children helped string the carriage to the bottom of our newly painted balloon shell to create hot air balloons.
During this experience the Piwakawaka children explored working as a team to create some new art exploring textures, process and communicating with each other about what we were doing along the way. During this activity we revisited techniques such as gluing and sticking and coming back over the month to add more features to our balloons.