The third graders at Grande Park are learning about the water cycle in their sciences classes right now. I thought it would be neat to make large 3 dimensional clouds to go along with what they are studying. When I was doing some research online I came across this website that explains how to make a giant cloud and knew that we had to try out the process.
I had the students work in groups of 4 or 5 . I gave each group about 6 balloons. With small rolls of masking tape, they taped the balloons together to form the shape of their cloud. (*Warning* The only time a balloon popped was when someone tried to remove the tape from the balloon.) Next, they began to cover the group of balloons with large strips of newspaper and paste. The type of paste we used was a paper mache paste from School Specialty. It didn't matter very much if the paper went on perfectly smooth, because later on we will cover the whole thing with a layer of stuffing and it will hide all imperfections. However, to make sure that the structure was strong enough we needed to put at least 2 if not more layers of paper on. We have an hour for class, so when they came in I did a quick demonstration and let them get right to work so that we would have enough time for paper mache and clean up.
I put the clouds on top of my cabinets to dry and then later created hooks out of pipe cleaners and hot glued them to the tops of the clouds. This way, as we were working on them, I could hang them from my ceiling and wouldn't have to find drying or storage space for them.
The next week we painted the entire structure with white tempera paint. As the paper gets wet with paint it loses some of it's strength. The students had to be careful with weak spots and not let their brushes crush the cloud. Since I had already glued the pipe cleaner hooks and added string, I hung them from the ceiling to dry. (You may be able to skip this step. The last step of adding a layer of stuffing covers the clouds pretty well, but I wasn't sure if we would really hide the newspaper so I had my students paint.)
We are on the last step this week, adding stuffing. I purchased 5 50oz.bags of poly-fil (the stuff you fill stuffed animals and pillows with) from Walmart last week. We have made 23 large clouds and have 6 more to complete. I still have 2 bags that I haven't even opened yet. This stuff goes far. I gave each table two containers of Elmer's Glue and paint brushes. They painted areas with glue and then pressed on a thin patch of stuffing. Large clumps of stuffing will not stick well. I had them pull the stuffing apart and flatten it with their hands before attaching it to the cloud.
They are looking awesome! I intend to move them out into the hallways of our school by March so that everyone will get to enjoy them. To further our artistic study of clouds, next week we will look at artwork by Georgia O'Keeffe and create a 2 dimensional piece using chalk pastel and colored construction paper. (Check out our follow up project here.)