How to Make a Mask for Any Occasion

Mask making is one of the fun and creative activities for young children. They will surely love making masks and applying their creative skills. This will enhance learning among children because their brains will be forced to work in order to create designs and blend colors.

Whether you are planning to teach the children to make a Valentine’s mask, a horror mask, a Christmas mask, a Halloween mask or any kind of mask; it is important that you are ready to give the children the right steps to make the mask. The secret to making a mask is in the planning and organization.

This activity will be a fun activity for the children for as long as you know how to guide them through so that they will consider the experience something interesting and fun. If the children get bored, they will not have fun doing the project.

It is important too that you have specific objectives and goals when you want to teach the children to make their own mask.

What skills are developed when you involve children in mask-making?

1. Creativity Skills
2. Color Appreciation
3. Motor Skills
4. Productivity
5. Self Expression
6. Emotional Release
7. Cognitive Development
8. Social Relationship

• Creativity - Arts and crafts activity is one of the best ways to enhance creativity among children. When children are creating something, they make their brain work in order to arrive at a design they like to apply to their project. Thus their imagination is being sharpened and their creativity is developed.
• Color Appreciation – Making mask involves color blending too. The children will develop their skills in choosing colors and blending them.

• Motor Skills – Working on the mask will develop the motor skills of the children. The children have hands on experience that will help them improve their motor skills.

• Productivity – Every time the children create and do something, they are developing their productivity skills. They will learn the importance of being productive people by making their own mask.

• Self Expression – When children make their mask they are expressing themselves through their art and craft work. They say that arts and craft is one of the best ways to express oneself.

• Emotional Release – The emotions of children can be released when they make a mask. Children have different emotions. They are sometimes excited, angry, happy, lonely, agitated, etc. It is good for the children to release these emotions because bottled up emotions hinder growth and development.

• Cognitive Development – Mask making will help the children develop their cognitive skills. Cognitive skill is the ability to think and learn new information. Every time the children do something new, their cognitive skills are being developed. They will use their thinking power to make designs and learn the new skills they are faced.

• Social Relationship – Social relationship is developed when children work together as a group. Making art and craft projects is a group work and children will be able to learn how to work with their peers. They learn to share things and they learn to work together.

Step #1 - Planning

Planning is very important when making anything. Mask making needs also a good plan in order to come up with a successful mask. Always bear in mind that planning is the basic step when doing anything. This is the foundation of anything that you make.

Step #2 – Organizing

Organizing includes the materials plus the design you plan to use in your mask. Everything must be organized first before you start making your mask.

Step # 3 – Prepare the cast

You can use a mask as mold to make the cast. Plain paper is good. You can use a pattern paper to make the cast. Use glue to paste the pattern paper in the mold. Dry the cast until hard.

Step # 4 – Painting

You can use water color, crayon or real paint to color your mask. Paint is the preferred one in order to make the mast look neat and good. You can design the mask with the paint.

Step # 5 – Final coating

In the final coating you can add some colorful effects to the mask to make it look better. You can apply your creativity and add some unique designs.

Making a mask could be fun and interesting especially if you know how to create a design and play with colors to make the mask an artistic piece. At first mask making could be difficult but as you make more masks you can improve and become an expert. Mask making is especially useful when there are occasions that call for it.

It is always good to let the children have a firsthand experience when doing something because this will make them learn things better and easier.