Yesterday in Life Skills we practiced painting a wall. It was difficult to decide what to talk about. The subject of house painting is huge! I decided to narrow it down to free-hand brush skills.
I re-used a piece of drywall that we had done dent-patching practice on. I drew a grid on it, then had the kids do two things with a rectangle of their choosing: paint a free-hand edge, and feather the paint as smoothly as possible.
The paint jobs didn’t end up looking very good. Painting on bare drywall is difficult. If the surface were primed it would have been a lot easier. In the end, I think the biggest benefit of this project was getting a brush in the kids’ hands so they could see what it was like to put actual house paint on an actual wall.
The paint was on the ‘oops’ shelf at the store. It was only $9.
I think I will turn our attention away from wall surface skills and look at a new home improvement topic.
Yes! Actual paint on an actual wall! Once again, this is so, so cool. I wonder how many kids are going to ask their parents if they can paint their room now?
That grid idea was brilliant.
OK, so here’s an idea: bring the crew to our house. We have a few places throughout the house where joint compound, primer, and paint need to be applied. The students can break into teams……..I’m sorry, what?………..oh. Okay then. Stay at school all day. We’ll be fine; don’t worry about us. We’ve put up with it this long already…
Frankly, I thought many of those rectangles looked quite well done – better than I can do, in fact. Common Core and SAT-Prep classes be danged, when this course is over, those kids won’t be able to thank you adequately enough for preparing them for life!