Exploring Science Through Art
This week my daughter Lilly wanted to make Papier-mâché baskets for her and two friends. We began by covering three balloons with Papier-mâché, then we began to think about decoration. We easily agreed on the idea of making animal heads. At first we were discussing making a zebra, jaguar, and bear. As I thought about paining “A zebra has stripes, a jaguar has spots, a bear is just brown, how are we going to make the bear detailed too?…” I came to the decision that I wanted to make all the baskets animals with patterns. When I described a list of animals with patterns to Lilly: zebras, giraffes, cheetahs, jaguars, leopards she liked the idea of making three spotted cats. “I don’t know the difference between them.” Suddenly this art project became the perfect time to complete some Science research.
Basket Creation
Supplies
- 3 balloons
- Papier-mâché mix(flour and water combined into a paste)
- news paper- cut into strips
- yellow paint
- painting supplies
- black/dark brown paint
- yarn
- glue
- scissors
- yellow paper
- black paper
- white paper
- Cardstock
- Prints of cutting sheets included below
Steps
First, cover the bottom two thirds of three balloons with a layer of Papier-mâché and leave them to dry overnight.
Next, paint all three baskets yellow and give them more time to dry.
Once dry pop the balloons and attach a string to each basket by poking holes on opposite sides of the rim.
Cutting Practice
Now we were ready to practice one of our school readiness skills by cutting curved lines. Using my templates, Lilly cut out and glued on eyes and ears for each cat. She struggled with holding the white eye pieces together while cutting the small circle off, so I adjusted the template to include drops of glue in these circles to help. Then, we used our scraps from the black paper to cut out a heart for each nose.
Research and spot painting
With all three heads finished, it was time to research cheetahs, leopards, and jaguars.
Looking cheetahs up on the internet we learned they weigh around 160 pounds as adults and have solid spots. While moving an onlline 3D model around my daughter noted “some are big and some are small.” Our cheetah basket was completed with large and small solid spots.
Next, we researched leopards and discovered they are smaller than cheetahs only weighing around 70 pounds as an adult. My daughter noticed the 3D model of the leopard had round patterns instead of spots. We learned this type of pattern is a rosette. Our leopard was completed with rosettes.
Last, we researched the jaguar and discovered he was the biggest of all weighing up to 210 pounds as an adult. Looking at an online 3D model showed just how large the rosettes are on the jaguar. “They are brown in the middle.” noted Lilly. Our jaguar was completed with large rosettes with a spot in the middle.
Cutting Templates
