Weekly Contest - Best Diary Game/ Papier Mache 1st June 2023

Today was a great day for me. I woke up strong and refreshed. I know you are curious for me to tell you about it. Don't worry, the story is just here at your doorstep.

As a teacher, i woke up early, got myself prepared and set out for work.

I had to make use of public transport to work. Due to fuel scarcity in my country, transportation fare increased so high, but, i later got a driver who took me down to my place of work at normal price.

In my workplace, we are having a creativity week. As teachers, we found it necessary not just to impact the lives of our pupils with just theories but to create out time to do the practical aspect of learning.

It's a time to teach our pupils different forms of skills. The program is meant to last for two weeks and each day has a schedule of activities to be carried out.

Today being the third day since the commencement of our creativity week, we schedule to teach papier mache and scouring powder. It was great to see my pupils watch and practice these skills.

We started with scouring powder in the morning hours. This was handled very well by one of my colleagues.

Having learnt how to do papier mache from high school, we taught them how to do papier mache

We started by soaking our paper. We can use white papers, newspapers etc. The preferred one amongst them is soft white papers.

Yesterday, we started by puting the papers into a bowl and we added water to it. We allowed it to stay for hours to enable it soak very well. We needed it to be very soft.

We also made use of hard bonds. This can also be replaced with starch. Its purpose is to glue the papers together in other to make them sticky.

We squeezed out the water in the bowl after the papers have soaked very well. We mixed the hard bond with the soaked paper inside the bowl. It was mixed until it has met the required mixture.

After this, we started molding a bowl. We took it gently and molded it around the bowl. After molding it carefully and it stick very well, we set it out to be kept under the sun to dry very well.

We also used it to mold a goat. It was so interesting to watch my pupils identify easily what we were molding. They also asked questions where necessary and answers were given to them.

We got a good shape of it and we set it out to be dried so it can come out strong.

The last thing we did was to also mold the inner part of our bowl. We had to, first of all, apply oil inside the bowl. This will make it remove easily after sun drying it.

Without the oil, it will stick to the bowl and might likely break when removing it. This will affect our work as it will not look smooth and nice.

After applying oil to the bowl, we started applying our paper to the bowl. We applied it to all parts of the bowl. This is done carefully to ensure that all sides are equal. If one part is bigger than the other, it will affect it and it wouldn't be pleasing to sight.

In the process of doing this, my pupils asked if they can use the bowl to eat or can put water into it after sun drying it.

We made them understand that the purpose of papier mache is not for eating or drinking nor can it be used as part of kitchen utensils. The major purpose of it is for beautification. It is a work of art.

We also let them understand that it can be used to create so many things including molding of pots, spoons, animals, etc.

One of our teachers shared her experience whereby she used starch in place of hard gum and it had an odor after sun-drying.

We told her that using cold water starch can cause odour whereby hot water starch is preferable because it wouldn't produce any odor.

At the end, we asked our pupil's several questions about it and they answered well. They were also given a space to practice what we did and it came out well.

At the closure of the day, we all parted ways to our different destinations. I came back tired. I was glad to receive an information from my girls who lives with me that they have prepared food.

I hurriedly rushed into the kitchen and had a handful of the yummy rice and stew.

Afterwards, i rested till 6pm and i left to attend a drama rehearsal. It was nice seeing my friends again in the drama rehearsal after a while. It was more like a re union.

We rehearsed very well and closed at about 7:30 pm.

After the successful drama rehearsal, i came back home, took my dinner and set out for a night rest.

My day was not just lovely, it was fulfilling.

I invite @okere-blessing @edidiongeffiong @ruthjoe