green paper sculptures

My Kindergarten students had great fun making simple construction paper sculptures. In honor of March and St. Patrick's Day in the near future, I decided to have them use only green paper for these. Prep was easy; I simply cut tons of paper strips from the 9" end of 9x12 construction paper, roughly an inch wide, but truthfully I didn't measure and didn't worry about the width, so there was a lot of variation. I also provided a few 4x4 inch squares on each table for kids to make cylinders or to cut out shapes to use along with spirals, accordion folds, circles, etc. A few students made "paper chain" loops that hung loose, and two little girls attached several strips end to end, creating long, long tails.

My favorite moment was when a student found a little "googly eye" on the floor, apparently left from a project from the previous day's after school program. He squealed ecstatically that he had "found an eye!" and glued it on the top of a loop of paper. He then looked around on the floor and found a tiny piece of green yarn, maybe about a half inch long, which he glued next to the eye and announced that "now I have a mouth!" Later, when we decided to name the sculptures, he decided that his would be named "Mr. Sculpture!"

It was very interesting to watch different students' approach to this activity. One student kept walking over to a table off to the side, on which were sitting a couple of unfinished models that I had used to show different ways to fold and curl the paper strips, and to remind students how much glue to use. He would stand there with his head on his crossed arms, gazing at them for a minute or two, then come over to ask me to show him again how to do a certain thing. In the end, it was lots of fun, there was lots of success, and most students managed not to use way too much glue!