Pencil Cup Project from Recycled Materials

My Elementary School and Middle School students have been learning how something as flat as a piece of paper can be turned into something 3D by looping strips into links of a chain or folding pages of a book to make a sculpture, or quilling folded paper to make framed images. Making pencil cups is another project that teaches a one more technique of making flat magazine pages into a tactile exterior to a pencil cup. It is an easy, fun project that can be used for years, rather than tossed after a month of hanging on the fridge.

Students found magazine pages which they rolled into a tube, using a pencil, drizzling a strip of Elmer's glue to secure the edge. For stiff covers, rubber bands would hold it the tube in place until the glue dried, and with tight rolls a second pencil would be used to scoot the first pencil out of the tube. The each rolled tube was hot glued to a clean tin can, transforming waste from the recycled bin to something you can use to organize pens, pencils, markers, scissors, and paint brushes. Children can learn to think through the side and direction they want to roll their pages to get the nicest edge, and how to organize their colors and patterns on the can. The next rainy day at home with a bored child, consider having them make one of these to spruce up their bedroom.

Hats Off to Trash Hats

hat from stove top packaging and a little ribbon

As my daily high school art students met to make fashion from garbage, my elementary and self-contained classes joined in on the fun with their hat making project. I started by teaching how to make a traditional pirate hat from newspaper, but students had lots of other ideas and the project quickly developed to making pointed party hats, crowns, and sunshine headbands. Two class sessions is all it takes to realize that there are lots of options on types hats and techniques to making them.a runway show stopper made of plastic cups, hot dog papers and foil.

As a literary component to the lesson I introduced students to one of my favorite childhood picture books: OLD HAT, NEW HAT by Jan and Stan Berenstain. In English class we are taught that a sentence requires both a noun and a verb, and that writers use sentences to write stories. But this book only contains one nouns (spoiler alert, it's "hat") and NO verbs!  It's a book of adjectives, opposites, rhymes, and of course hats! I love it because it's a great book to teach little kids about how to describe as well as having them make predictions using rhymes and context. It also contains a great life lesson about how about how sometimes forget about how great things are for us until we go looking for something newer and better only to realize that nothing compares to a favorite, albeit old, hat.  Maybe our lives aren't as bad as we think. 

So make hats during your language lesson or read during your art lesson, but either way, you will walk out of the classroom with a little bit of style!