Back to Bugs!

Our little co-op started again and we finished up some art/entomology projects we had started. We had made baked clay (Sculpey) scarabs when we studied beetles. After the kids formed them, I took them home and skewered holes through them and baked them. We wanted to be able to use them as jewelry, so I added a bead and jewelry findings to them. Note the tiny scarab earrings by Elea and the fossilized centipede by W. When I returned them to the kids, we painted them with gold acrylic paint and wiped it off, leaving gold in the indentations. When dry we put strings on them for necklaces. This was a fun project. It's interesting how much scarab jewelry is out there if you look it up! (See some cool examples below.)

We also finished up our rock ladybugs. This is a two step project because the paint takes a long time to dry-especially when they are enthusiastically painted. We just left our wet, red rocks on paper plates and finished them with black permanent markers when we came back from break.