COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL creative and authentic art  63 touching the gluey sculpture as they created it and immediately washed their hands. Either direction is perfectly fine. If you allow the children to use exces- sive amounts of glue, it is best to have a sturdy base underneath: strong pieces of cardboard or poster board work nicely. We tinted our eggshells green, but whether you color the shells is a personal choice. Giant Pancakes Giant sculptures are a fun and unique project to try. The children make a sculpture that imitates some- thing familiar that they can associate with—yet it is so big! A friend’s discovery of artist Claes Old- enburg’s work (a sculptor who creates large-scale food sculptures) inspired a project the children ab- solutely love! It is fun and provides several days’ worth of artistic and creative adventure! Large circle shapes that looked like round paper pillowcases were purchased from Oriental Trading Company. We filled the giant circles with crum- pled newspaper and then taped them shut to keep them full. On the first day, the children painted the stuffed circles using rollers and brushes and yel- low and brown paints of assorted textures. It was an explorative experience as the children figured out how to paint what they thought a big pancake would look like. Squeezing on the “syrup” The next day, the pancakes were put out again, as were different brushes and different shades of yellow, brown, and orange paints. We created “but- ter” from cereal boxes: we taped the cereal boxes closed, and the children painted the boxes yellow using paint brushes and rollers. When they were dry, we attached the cereal boxes to the top of the pancakes. On the third day, we brought out the squirt bottles and filled them with thinned-out paint to make “syrup.” This was the moment the children anticipated the most, because they love using the squirt bottles and thought squeezing “syrup” would be fun. One child requested sparkles, so we brought out the glitter too. The children loved this project! One of our large pancake sculptures was later placed in the school lobby for children and parents to view. It was also placed in our art exhibit. Simple Woodworking Painting a giant “pancake” Younger children enjoy making wood sculptures using assorted small pieces of wood and glue. Squeeze-​bottle glue and brushed-on glue both work well. While the sculptures are drying, it is a good idea to add a dab or two of wood glue, if nec- essary, to open areas or cracks in the sculptures to hold them together more strongly—but be careful not to dismantle the child’s work. A wood-sculpture project can last several days. The children could COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL