Laura Young
ECB Publishing, Inc.
Fifth grade student Gretchen Brown stopped by the Monticello News office one day recently to see if we could give her some old newspapers. It's not unusual for several people a week to come load up their trunk with $2 bundles of past issues. They work well for packing up dishes for a move, potty training puppies, rolling into fire logs or mulching gardens.
But Gretchen had something else in mind. She was learning about Earth's continents in her homeschool curriculum, and she wanted to make a paper maché globe. We gave her some old newspapers, and she agreed to document her project so we could share it with our readers.
Gretchen made lots of important discoveries during her project, not just about the continents, but also about the craft of paper maché and also about the payoff for persevering.
In addition to rounding up newspapers, paint and a balloon for making her globe, Gretchen needed paste. She learned how to make some using water and flour, but it was not as simple as it might sound. First she tried a recipe that required cooking the flour and water into glue. Unfortunately, if not watched and stirred constantly, it can burn. And it did! Plus, cooked glue takes a long time to cool down. So Gretchen found a no-cook recipe that she'd be able to use right away, with no chance of burnt bits floating in the paste. Because paper maché projects are built with layers of glued-down paper strips that need to dry before the next layer goes on, they can take many days to complete. Lo and behold, while the paper strips were taking their time getting dry, Gretchen noticed that her bowl of paste was getting “moldy and gross.” So, once again it was back to the mixing bowl, but this time, her no-cook paste would go into in the refrigerator, even if it didn't need to cool down.
Then there was the issue with the world becoming a bit too bumpy. Gretchen discovered that newspaper strips that were cut too long and wide tended to buckle when laid down on the curves of her balloon.
“It was too much trouble to try to save globe number one,” says Gretchen. “So I started over.”
Through trial and error, she determined that thin strips six inches long would give globe number two the smooth surface she was looking for.
Once she had successfully covered her balloon with glued newspaper strips, and everything was dry, it was time to get on with the continents.
“I practiced drawing the continents on paper first,” explains Gretchen. “I tried to get the proportions right. On the globe, first I drew the equator. Then I drew the continents above or below the equator.” Finally, she painted in the continents with green paint and the oceans and seas with blue paint. When the project was complete, Gretchen realized that the Earth is like a puzzle. Now that she has the big picture, she's looking forward to studying each continent up close, individually.
Gretchen got the idea for her paper maché globe project from a craft book in the American Girl series. She had some help from her mom and dad, Jen and Todd Brown, as well as her sister-in-law, Kaden Holmes, and Charlotte “Honey” Stevens, her grandmother who lives next door.
Gretchen didn't use all of the newspapers we gave her for the project, but she's found a new use for the old issues: a drop-cloth when you're painting... your toenails!
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