Papier-Mâché Zoo

I've been doing papier-mâché projects across the board this month (October).

Basically I discussed some options with each of my groups and let them choose the project of their liking.
The main difference was the method and structure that was used. One group did witches and wizards for Halloween. Some of them turned them into monsters, aliens, ghosts or something else! These were all based on a cone with a ball of crumpled paper stuck in it, and then several layers of paper. At the end, when it was stiff enough, we covered those with colored tissue paper. (I'm sorry that I didn't take many pictures...)

Another group chose to make a pumpkin. We stuffed a plastic bag with paper, stretched some rubber bands in a criss-cross manner and covered them with several layers of brown and white paper. 

When it was dry, before covering with orange tissue paper and paint, we cut them (well, I did this part...) in the middle so it turned into a box with a lid for serving candies.

One of the groups chose animals. The only rule I imposed, for technical reasons, was that it has to be an animal that walks on 4 legs. Some of them were disappointed that they couldn't do whales or dolphins but I promised them that some other time we can do ocean mammals. It is just easier, when you have a group of 10 kids, to at least start with the same basic structure. 

We all started with a crumpled newspaper for head and body and few toilet paper rolls for legs and neck (If needed) . From there it evolved to mainly elephants (3) pigs (two and a half - one was half pig, half robot...) one giraffe, one hippo and two horses.

Newspaper and toilet paper rolls were bundled with a lot of tape. Then, like in the previous methods, we covered the skeleton with 2-3 layers of brown paper. After three lessons we were ready for painting. Finally I sprayed the beasts with varnish and set them free...