Luminaries

As it turns out, this project is more age appropriate for 3-5 grade, and younger students who have the ability to listen and follow directions, like my awesome God-daughter and her friends.

That is lesson 1.

Lesson 2 is not to underestimate the thoughtful parents who send in extra (and sometimes entire bagfuls) of extra jars. Just in case someone forgot. Which they always do. I ended up with extra jars. Thanks, Thoughtful Moms!

Lesson 3 is that the time when you encourage students to use lots of paint, to really glop it on, they will use it as sparingly as possible.

Lesson 4 is to use small jars for the students you know won't take you seriously when you tell them repeatedly to cover the entire jar with paint. I sent one kiddo back to keep working 5 separate times. The jar still isn't covered.

So today's project was to create a winter themed luminary. Students brought in glass jars, and we used a Modge Podge mixture (with a little blue paint and glitter) to adhere snowflakes and paint the outside of the jar. I used my die cutting machine to cut out about 224 different snowflakes and another 28 house/tree scenes from white paper. I then sorted all of those little snowflakes into sets and put them into little baggies for each student to alleviate the usual "she got a different one than I got!" complaints.

Using foam brushes, they apply the "paint" to the jar, add the paper piece, and go over it again with more "paint". And then they repeat, until they have covered the jar and theoretically used all of their snowflakes.

I demonstrated how to do this in front of all of them, I swear.

Oh well. The good news is that they are drying in the teacher's lounge for a few days, and then I can go back and "touch them up" a bit. Once they are done, I will take some pictures and post them.

Next week, we will be starting the class with a little discussion about listening, and also about cleaning up. I had to throw away all of the used paper towels because the kids would wash their hands, dry them, and then leave the crumpled up towels on the counter. I'm not even sure where that idea came from.

Lessons learned for the future. Next week, Thanksgiving themes...

This is my model luminary. I made the kids' paint a little lighter, since this came out really blue.