Piece of Cake

Thiebaud Mania!!  The 5th grade created slices of cake.  These yummy sculptures turned out AMAZING!!  These cute little delights have become a focal point in our school right now.   Watch the following video to get a very quick idea of how we made the sculptures.

I started this project with an 'engineering task'.  I showed the following to the class and gave them 20 minutes to figure out the puzzle.  It was REALLY fun to watch the kids get into small groups and try to make the 3-D shape.  I gave them only the triangle for the top of the cake, and some of the students managed to create the shape by the end of the 20 minutes.  We discussed it as a class and by the end of it, we were all able to create the base of the cake out of cardboard.

On day two, students spent the time paper machè the cardboard form.  Again, another stellar class. The 5th-grade students have never used or touched the slimy stuff before and it brought broad smiles to every student.

The final day we decorated the cakes.  Students choose paper they wanted their 'cake' to be.  They used glue sponges and collaged the paper onto the form.  Once they were done, they used a puffy paint recipe to fill the frosting parts.  There are lot's of recipes online for this great medium (click here).

Students used gems, sequence, pipe cleaners, cotton balls, and straws to create the decorations on the cake.  Every student came up with a unique design for their cakes.  Comments such as, 'I love this', 'I wish this was real', 'I'm getting hungry'.  There was so much pride in these small sculptures.