School Project | Building an Igloo

I knew from the time that we attended his Open Day two years ago, that this project was coming. There, on exhibit, stood a number of dwellings:- an oxwagon, a farm house with lots of little details of washing lines and farm animals, a squatter camp made from metal plates...a Tuscan Villa... It's suppose to be a collaborative project between kids and parents. In some cases I doubted that a kid was allowed near the engineering and adding of mini model trees etc. It looked like a lot of work, and quite daunting. And so came our turn this year...

On my Pinterest board I found this amazing Igloo project from Bookhoucrafts. I loved that it was a relatively easy, participative project. I loved the simplicity and high visual impact. It shows you step by step how they did theirs. We did ours (shown here) somewhat differently: 

 Day One of our project I made some papermache goo. I found the recipy somewhere on Pinterest but the link to it is no longer available, so I'll share it here: 

Paper mache goo recipy:

Combine half a cup of flour + 2 cups of cold water in a bowl. Boil 2 cups of water in a saucepan and add the flour & cold water mixture. Bring to the boil again. Remove from heat & add 3 tablespoons of sugar. Let it cool. The paste will thicken as it cools.

We worked over a balloon and used a yogurt container to papermache the entrance over. Instead of vellum, we used torn up pieces of baking paper. The kids really enjoyed tearing it and dipping them through the goo. We ended up adding more than one leayer, working up and horizontal to create the appearance of iceblocks.We allowed it to dry overnight.

Day two I applied some thinned down whiteglue over the dome and entrance and added some white glitter we had. I also applied some glow in the dark paint, but thankfully it didn't work as I only later realized that it glows in a luminous green! Then it was assembly time. We carefully removed the balloon, trying to involve the kids as far as possible. I was glad that we used more layers, as over the area where the door entrance was to be, we used only one layer and it was very brittle - but the rest was fine. I neatly cut the dome to shape, cutting out the door entrance.

Then trimmed the arch that goes over the entrance. We prepared a board (from an old framed picture), painting it white and adding glitter. With a craft knife I cut a pool out of one layer of the cardboard and slipped blue paper and a transparency inbetween to create the fishing pond. Added some glitterglue fish.

We glued the entrance to the dome - a little tricky. First taped it together on the inside, then added glue over the outside. Then we glued the complete igloo to the board. Added a penquin we had on hand and a Leggo Scientist. The wow factor was the little lights (we used a battery powered headlamp and a tiny cubboard light- found at Crazy store locally).

Reuben took it to school the following day and did an oral on the process. Switching on the lights at the end, got a "wooahw" from the whole class. He was also one of two that was selected from the class to exhibit at the next Open day at school. A less daunting project for new open day parents I hope?