Plaster Cloth

Jesse found some 12″ wide plaster impregnated cloth in the American Science and Surplus catalog, (do not order plaster with anything you want to stay clean, it will fill the shipment box with plaster grit), foolishly given the popularity of this miraculous substance we only ordered one roll. It isn’t gone yet, but I think we’ll be ordering more! THis stuff is so cool!

So cool that it was requested as a repeat activity the next week! I tried to present making paper and masking tape forms to wrap with the plaster cloth, but the girls were focused on the plaster cloth as being a cast making material, and have been doing a lot of body wrapping.

Which is a great developmental activity connected with body knowledge and proprioception all on its own, even without the creative and fine motor fun, so woo! I am not complaining. They made arm casts, shoes, tummy casts, and toe casts. Fun!

Rebecca eventually progressed from toe casts to making balls, and then they got into painting them several days later.

The first week we did plaster cloth there were only two girls including Rebecca, so I didn’t really need to do much crazy crowd control and got to enjoy being totally absorbed in my own sculpture!! I made a scrunched paper mold for the first floor, wrapped it, stuck on another scrunched paper spacer, layered on another floor, and then once more for three floors. Then I took a keyhole saw and cut out all the doors and windows, handing them one by one to Rebecca as treasures, then went back and covered all the window edges and reinforced a few thin spots in the walls and floors. ‘Someday’ I will paint it and fill it with tiny twig furniture, but possibly not until after the girls are in college. 🙂

So go out and buy plaster! But not all of it, we still need to order some more! Don’t you love American Science and Surplus? Some of their catalog descriptions are so hilariously fabulous!