Seeing Stars

We are part of a co-op class that meets twice a month. There are 13 families, which adds up to 48 kids. The kids range in age from 1 year to 15 years old. We have classes for the kids. This year the older kids are going to be taking a debate class. The youngest kids are going to be doing an art class and the middle age kids are going to be doing a class on colonial living. After class, we do some group games which is nice because some things don't lend themselves very easily to home schooling. For example, it's really hard to play volleyball with only 3 people. It's also a great place for the kids to perform in front of a group. Each time we meet, 3 or 4 kids do some sort of presentation. We've seen piano pieces played, Irish folk dancing, puppet shows, hand bell performances, speeches and show and tell to name a few. We also schedule some field trips throughout the year. On Friday we had our first meeting for the year and we always make some sort of tee shirt to wear on field trips and for group activities. This year we used the freezer paper stencil technique. You may have used this technique before or seen it around blog land. It is so easy and fun. We used stars as our general theme and we picked out several colors so that we could keep some uniformity. The first thing you do is to cut a star out of freezer paper and then iron the stencil shape on your tee shirt. After the freezer paper is ironed onto your shirt, you paint the shape any color you want. We slipped cardboard in between the front and back of the shirt so that the paint wouldn't bleed through. When you're done painting you let the paint dry. As you can see we had quite a few t-shirts drying that day.
Next, was the really fun part: embellishment! We used those slick paints that you can get in any arts and crafts store. The more squiggles the better. Just squiggle the paint right over the star and freezer paper making any design that tickles your fancy.
When everything is dry, (and this part took the longest) you can pull off the freezer paper gently and see your masterpiece. The edges turn out very crisp and clean, thanks to the ironed on freezer paper! Then of course show off your style! They all turned out so good. This was a really fun project...so fun in fact that I'm already planning some more ideas for the future!