In Praise of a Paper Plate

It's hard to believe that it's been 3 weeks since our Vacation Bible School.  We do ours fairly early, just after school is out, before we lose people to vacations and camp.  For those of you who have yet to spend part of your summer working with children, I offer this reminder in praise of cheap supplies.

I bought many supplies for my recent stint as Arts and Crafts Director for our church's Vacation Bible School.  I didn't expect that a lowly paper plate would have so many uses.  I bought a package of 200, and we used almost every one.

Below you'll see one of the most common uses, as a surface to do the work.

Paper plates also make a great surface for projects that are in process.  Below, you see clay air drying.

Paper plates also make great palettes for paint. 

It's good to have a surface underneath what you're painting.

Paper plates protect the other surfaces as paint dries.  And if people have to take a project home before it's completely dry, the paper plate provides protection and makes transportation a smidge easier.

On the last day, we made masks out of paper plates.

Sure, we could have done plaster molds, or something much more complicated, like wrapping people's faces in the plaster infused cloth strips that are used to make casts.  But a paper plate is an easy medium.  And not claustrophobic!

Everyone loved this project. 

We only had 5 days, so we could have done more:  noisemakers out of plates stapled together comes to mind. 

What a treat to remember that sometimes the most basic, cheap materials yield just as much fun as the higher end products.