Students Make Identity Masks

During the first and second week of school, 5th graders made masks to express themselves. They are currently on display outside Ms. Rainey’s and Ms. Daniel’s classrooms.

5th graders make these every year and it is the first, big, 5th-grade project of the year. There are three main steps to making these, paper mache, painting, and decorating.

The first and least creative of these steps is paper mache. Instead of using a paste made from flour and water, they used a goop mixture. “It looks like snot,” a 5th grader said. Also, the school couldn’t collect enough two-liter pop bottles to use as faces as they usually did. So, they instead bought blank masks to replace the bottles.

The second step is painting, which is done the day after the paper mache. White paint was in much higher demand than Blake's teachers expected, so, even though the painting session started with just 5 colors at each table, not including white or black, the session ended with every table having white paint and most other tables having black.

The last, and probably most popular step is decorating! That means putting things on your mask that represent you. Things are usually put on with hot glue, but sometimes you need to attach things with something else, such as using twist ties or thumbtacks.

Some interesting decorations include a micro bit mouth with changing expressions, giant googly eyes, and a hockey puck cut in half to make glasses. Some people chose to cut out their eyes, and many other people chose to use goggles or glasses as their eyes. There were many ideas for hair, including string, paper, fake hair, crayons, pasta and pipe cleaners.