Dale Chihuly Chandelier

Who doesn't love Dale Chihuly's mesmerizing glass works!?! I think we are all amazed by his glass masterpieces. 

My kids watched a great video of Dale Chihuly creating art with his team.

Dale Chihuly Gathers and Forms Video 

 My kids barely blink because they are so memorized by his the process. 

The video really helped them to understand the glass making process and it's transformation.  

1. We collected clear water bottles from the school.

2. Clean and cut off the bottoms.

3. Paint the inside with warm and cool colors.

4. Students cut all the dried bottles

5. We used a heat gun to melt the bottles and stretch them out

6. We used wire to twist together 3 bottles (where the neck of the cap is) 

7. Then we twisted the wire onto a long metal piece (from Lowes which is used for closets-about $12)

*Make sure the wire is tight on the bottles and on the metal piece.

Slowly we put everything together. Warm colors on top and cool colors on the bottom.

My maintenance guy was wonderful and made this special metal piece for our chandelier to hang from so it would meet the fire code.

Ta-Da!!

It's lightweight and about as tall as me  5'6".

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It was great surprising the staff and students with it! My fifth graders were very proud of themselves. And I really loved that is was made with recycled plastic and was inexpensive to make.

Cardboard Masks

What to do at the end of the year? This is always a tough one.  The kids are burnt out and keeping them interested can be a bit of a challenge.  It's also a good time to use the donated materials that have been taking up space in my room.  So this year I decided to make wild masks with my 3rd graders.  I really liked the end product, and so did the kids.  

We only used recycled materials to construct our masks.  

Materials:

Cardboard

Rope

Egg Cartons

Bubble wrap

Fabric

Paint

Liquid Glue

Oil Pastels

The kids came up with 3 different design sketches.  We talked about leaving room for the eye holes and a place for their nose.  They picked their favorite design and drew it onto their cardboard.  We talked about making these really large and keeping it simple.

The hardest part was cutting out the main design.  This is where my xacto knife and I came to the rescue. I definitely gained some arm muscles cutting some of these out. 

They had a great time adding all the materials to their masks. It was interesting to see the students get really interested in textures, height, layers, space, color, etc.  

Overall, I think it was a fun way to end the year.  I definitely enjoyed seeing their proud grins underneath their wild masks.