Paper Mache Balloons

“The ability to create something beautiful grows students’ capacity to dream as well as the ability focus on a goal and watch that goal manifest to life.”

Camp PEACE director 

Cobb County school district social worker and Paint Love Program Director Mandy Goodwin lead an inspiring project for the kids at Camp PEACE. On the first session of this two-week project, campers learned how to make paper mache balloons. Each kid took a balloon and covered it in strips of newspaper dipped in paste.

Once each one was sufficiently sticky, we set them aside to dry. Then, each camper took four strips of construction paper on which they wrote positive affirmations about themselves. Proclamations of “I am smart,” “I am funny,” and “I am beautiful,” filled the room.

The next week, we returned the dried paper mache to the campers and helped them pop and remove the balloons on the inside. After that, they each painted their paper mache products in a variety of bright colors to turn them into hot air balloons! Some kids stuck with abstract designs, while others turned theirs into something specific - like a strawberry or a face. Once they’d finished, we used string to hang small styrofoam cups from the bottom of each. Then, the kids took the affirmations they wrote the week before and attached them to the bottom of the cups.

When they set their balloons down to dry, we loved seeing the kids’ colorful creations all around the room. The project was such a creative way to foster self-love in the campers. The hot air balloons remind us that positivity lifts us up while negativity drags us down. 

Another reason this was such an impactful project for the Camp PEACE kids is that a multi-session project helps teach resilience and follow-through, the Camp PEACE director wrote, “it really taught the kids patience, hard work in stages, and to come back to important things to finish them.”

Camp PEACE is the summer program by the Women’s Resource Center to End Domestic Violence for kids whose lives have been affected by domestic violence.  The mission of Camp PEACE is to bring children exposed to domestic violence together for a month of activities that facilitate Peace Education, Action, Compassion and Empathy.  Based on principles of Peace Education and Cognitively-based Compassion Training, Camp PEACE helps children learn alternatives to violence while promoting tolerance, impartiality, affection, self compassion and compassion for others.

Camp PEACE has been a Paint Love partner since 2016. We bring weekly arts programming to their summer camp each year, serving 50 kids each summer for 2-hour sessions each week for two months. Projects focus on giving children a safe space and creative voice to process their experiences. Trauma such as domestic violence can directly interfere with the part of the brain that manages language capacity. Artistic expression engages parts of the brain that don’t rely on verbalization, allowing them to find their “voice”, and know that what they say matters.