Our 100 days project
Miss Sassy Pants came home with a project assignment a few weeks ago: to create something out of 100 pieces of something to celebrate the 100th day of school. I suggested that we use the old sheet I was about to repurpose and make it into a fabric wreath. When I explained to her what that meant, she was excited.
Our first step was to rip the sheet and count it into 100 pieces. She and I did this together while sitting on the couch. Then, she helped me count them and stack them in 10 bunches of 10 (good use of math skills!).
Then, we had to find a wire hanger; I only found 2 in the entire house. I unraveled the top of the hanger and shaped it into a circle. I assumed that the 100 pieces wouldn’t fit around the ENTIRE hanger if I didn’t shorten it a bit, so I folded it into itself.
Then, we started tying the pieces of fabric onto the hanger. Miss SP was brilliant at this part. I did half; she did the other half. I finished the last few because space was getting tight, and she wasn’t sure how to do it from there.
When we were done, it looked like this:
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| Floppy 🙁 |
I wasn’t pleased with the floppiness of the material, so I gave it a haircut.
Then, we decided it needed something else. The colors in the material just weren’t that exciting. I suggested that we make either her first or last initial to hang on the wreath and choose a ribbon we had in the craft closet to fancy-it-up a bit.
She was totally into this idea. The next part, I will admit, I basically did by myself. I tried to let her help me, but the letter I created was sort of small, and her little fingers just aren’t as nimble as mine. We made the letter out of an empty box of Baby MumMums.
Once I created the letter, we started the paper mache process. I was excited to have found a “recipe” for paper mache that included equal parts water and flour and a dash of salt.
I handed this part of the process over to Miss SP. She was completely grossed out, but got the first layer on pretty well.
A few days later, we did the second layer.
Once that was completely dry, I had her paint the letter white to sort of “prime” the paper mache so we couldn’t see the newsprint.
Then, she painted the letter the pink she had chosen.
Finally, we attached the letter and ribbon to the wreath. I had to give it a little more of a “haircut,” but this is our final product.
I’m really proud of what we created. I would have taken more time to do the final touches, but she was determined to turn it in this morning.
What I’m most proud of is the amount of work she did for her project and the fact that 100% of the materials we used came out of our house — we didn’t have to go to the store for anything. We recycled an old sheet, newspaper, cardboard box, and ribbon. Go us. 🙂
