I adore cement!!!

                                                  Here are the sculptures still unpainted.

I sure love cement- it's dirt cheap, it's sturdy and it's possibilities are endless.......OK, it IS super heavy to carry up the stairs to the art room at 7:20am....but it's worth it!

I try to vary my lessons a lot between learning "skills" and letting the kids just "play" with materials. Art is much more investigation than it is following rules!! So for my sculpture enrichment students this past semester, I gave them Styrofoam plates, cement (I poured) and a ton of STUFF. There were no rules, no instructions, no reference points, nothing ;).

After the cement dried, we popped the pieces out and the kids arranged them on wood boards that I supplied. I brought a variety of glues they used to adhere the pieces. If the kid-safe glues were not working to adhere the way they wanted to arrange, I let the kids give me instructions then used epoxy. They painted the completed sculptures and boards to finish them off. I challenged them to cover every part of the cement so they would transform the material as much as possible.