Paper Mâché with kids

Here's a messy activity I did with my 6 year old and 2 year old.  We made paper mache cups.  We still need to paint them and maybe add a coat of glue or something to protect it a little.

What we used:
- 2 cups flour
- 3 cups water
- 2 tsp salt
- 5 disposable plastic cups
- strips of newsprint

We mixed together the flour, water and salt in a big mixing bowl.  Then I poured the mixture into smaller mixing bowls for each kid.  We dipped the strips of newsprint into the bowl, and tried to gently remove the excess before layering the strip onto our plastic cup.  We continued layering on more strips dipped with the paste until we covered the cups several times in different directions.  Then we let our cups dry for 1-2 days before I removed the plastic cup.  I just cut strips of the cup and carefully separated the paper mache from the cup surface.

It's probably easier doing paper ache with a balloon because you can just pop it and remove the balloon, but I didn't happen to have any balloons on hand that afternoon.  You can trim the top edge of the cup or leave it jagged.  We might paint or layer coloured tissue paper with glue/paste to decorate the cups another day.

I have a big water/sand tub table that we worked in and had a mat under that to catch drips that inevitably made their way out of the tub.  It helps to try to smooth out the strips of paper against the cup before layering more strips on top.  You get a stronger cup if there are less air pockets while you're layering the strips.  If you want stronger cups, you can use white glue instead of flour... but with little kids, I prefer sticking with the basics.


Update: Here are the cups we made after painting them and adding a layer of glue on top.