Craft Class Week 8: The Monsters Get Thoughtful

3-10-11

This Week's Project: Wet Felted Soap (wrap wool roving around a bar of soap and rub it with soapy hot water until it felts a tight little jacket around the bar.)

I think I'm going to quit forming any preconceptions about any of these projects..they turn out to be the opposite every time.

Walked in the classroom and was immediately bombarded with aggressive demands to smell 12 different kinds of soap (they were instructed to bring their own bar.)  Several minutes of sniffing and dramatic "oooohs" and "ahhhs" for the face numbing gourmet scents later, and me and my now useless nose began setting up a demo station at what is usually the "boys table."  I attempted a wolf whistle to round everybody up for my new and exciting "demo" approach, but naturally (and, as always, I should add) ended up just blowing air and spit about a foot infront of me. nice. (Who was I trying to kid?)  Settled then for a nice, loud and ever effective "Everybody listen up!" 

With everyone gathered around me, I gave a short and simple wet felting demo and was absolutely stunned (and semi-alarmed) to find it greeted with nothing but curious faces and quiet mouths. Yes! completely quiet mouths! Just captivated eyes followed by greedy fingers once I dumped out the bag of roving. 

Everyone dove in right away picking out their colors (Which I've learned to strategically pack based on their individual preferences - I wanted to give myself a high five this week when the 3 boys all went right for the Carolina Hurricane's black and red) then got right to work lathering them in soap and water and felting away!

No soap wars, no popping the bubble wrap felting mats, no major water spills, things went surprisingly smooth!  We had one noise complaint from the teacher downstairs but all in all the kids were doing a nice job of working diligently and sharing with each other.  Or that's at least what it seemed like from my position.  I spent most of my time over at the sink attempting to tighten up the "finished" products that everyone was handing me, so that they wouldn't fall apart after one use.  In doing this,  I failed to notice two things: 1. the mass amount of roving that was being used outside the project to create giant soapy, soggy wet felted balls (which everyone was quite proud of, of course) and 2. the secret "surprise miss lauren" operation that was taking place more covertly on the other side of the classroom. 

The secret operation, was headed up by two little girls who had found a little felted teddy bear in the bag of roving.  They took one of the extra bars of soap that I packed, felted it, then attached the little bear to it with a blankety/string configuration resulting in the following adorable "bear in a sleeping bag" look.  They followed it up 10 minutes later with another finished bar containing "a piece of felt from everyone in the class"  and I about melted there on the spot.  (They like me!) Add in the squeaky and excited "We made this for you Miss Lauren!" delivery, and I was speechless.

From there out I helped everyone finish up their giant felt balls, bagged up the freshly felted wet soap bars for backpack travel, and smiled as some of the kids even attempted to help me clean up our very wet mess. (I'm thinking at this point someone might have drugged their chocolate milks at lunch, but I'm not asking any questions.) I also accepted several felted "accessories" for my new bear soap from several kids (these consisted mostly of useless felt scraps that could be loosely interpreted as a hat, blanket, shoe etc, but the thought was still nice.)


Left with a smile on my face and 2 soggy bars of gifted soap in my pockets, and called it a good day :)

Craft Class Week 7: The Monsters Get Emotional

3/3/11
This week's project: Amazing Magnets (Cut out pictures, put them in a bottle cap, fill with amazing glaze resin, bake, and attach a magnet to the back)

Oyyyyyy where to start....
Well I owe a lot of this week's chaos to my own mistakes, My first mistake: thinking there was such a thing as a simple craft class (hahahahhahahah) My second mistake: a shortage of bottlecaps..

I packed enough bottlecaps and magnets for each (of the 12) kids to make 2 magnets, (this might seem stingy, but this was all the magnets we had available at the store) plus a few extra caps to avoid squabbles over color choices.  Everyone chose their caps quickly and began rummaging through the piles of paper and magazines for their perfect images (cats, princesses, dinosaurs etc.) I broke up a few tug of wars and was surprised to find that everyone had their pictures chosen or drawn within a few minutes.  This would seem like great news, however my brain immediately began to panic at the thought of them finishing early and enduring a repeat of last week's mass escape attempts. Also I had spoken with the school director before class and confirmed my suspicions that the kids are in fact supposed to stay with me for the full hour......damn.

One child then announced the possibility of finishing early to the class and asked what we would do when we were done. (PANIC!) "We'll find something to do if we have extra time" I said cooly.  Another child promptly responded that he would go play outside because he is in aftercare. (grroooooaannn!) forced by this innocent presumption, I explained the new policy of strict classroom containment for the full hour...anddddd in doing so pulled the tab on the grenade of chaos and emotions.  The aftercare kid immediately broke down into sobs of "I didn't even want to do craft class! My mom made me do it!!!!" tears materialized out of nowhere, the screamer boy set into the deepest pout I've ever seen, One girl looked at me as though I'd just canceled Christmas and asked "but whyyy?"with big gooey eyes, anddd most of the rest of the girls were thankfully indifferent.

After some sympathizing, I managed to somehow get everyone calmed down and refocused on the project.  Apparently though, this refocusing ignited a creative magnet-making fire in everyone and found me apologetically explaining again why each person could only have two caps.

We started baking next (as the requests for a 3rd cap persisted.) I was once again juggling 14 different tasks at once to appease the little chirps of "Miss Lauren!!" and everything was going fairly smoothly.  Then I noticed a crowd forming around the resin table, and more alarmingly, one little girl crying in the middle of the crowd.  Anddd here we go.

So apparently another girl had said that she didn't like this girl's magnet, which I quickly rationalized with "Well, everybody likes different things, that's why everyone's magnet is going to be different" to a full choir of "Yea but she said it in a mean way!" I took this opportunity to glance around the room in search of the accused "meanie," only to find her on the other side of the room, helplessly hunched over in a ball under a desk crying twice as hard as the alleged victim...

...The reality of the completely doomed class set in at this point and I debated crawling under a desk for a while myself.  Instead I crawled up next the cryer and gave my best effort at soothing and coaxing her out from under the desk.  After 10 minutes of comfortingand several offers of other craft projects, I finally lured her out out of there with the promise of a third bottle cap..of all motivators (I was ready to give this kid my right arm to come out form there and she practically bounced out at the mention of an extra bottlecap)..whatever, call it a success Moments later I was bombarded with demands for a third cap for everyone.  "Fine, here whatever but I have no more magents so this cap won't have a magnet."  5 minutes later I began distributing the magnets and listened politely to each of them tell me "I need 3 magnets" while fighting the urge to implode.

Everyone finished baking and I asked them (more as a joke to myself) to start cleaning up (hahahahhahaha) while their caps cooled.  It was then, as I was sprinting around the classroom picking up paper scraps under the feet of dancing children, I realized that I forgot to pack the magnet glue. Ughhhh. Doom Doom Doom.  Lucky for me, magnets naturally stick to the back of metal bottle caps via this thing called a magnetic charge (Thank you Science!) The kids didn't really seem to care that the magnets weren't permanently adhered, and half the girls tried to turn them into necklaces anyway, so I was saved.

After all that, everyone surprisingly left pretty happy.  The cryers made amends and became best friends again (yay sisterhood!), and me and everyone who didn't sprint out the door at exactly 4:30 played "run form the purple monster" with a wad of unraveled purple ribbon until their parents showed up.  Good times.  Will be stocking the fridge with beer for next week.