The Pinata Project

Eighth grade math. It's the end of the year, so they were working on a final project. They were making pinatas.

It's a volume exercise. They were to use at least three different shapes, put them together in such a way as to suggest some sort of critter, and then calculate how much volume (for candy) was in the thing.

As you can imagine, they made quite a bit of a mess. This was the last day they could work on the project (it was due Monday), so mostly they had the main body complete, and most were doing some detail work.

(That may be a bit simplistic. We are talking about eighth graders. Some of them had barely started the project.)

The teacher had left all sorts of materials for the kiddos to use. (I imagine many of them were paid for out of her own pocket, such is the state of school funding these days.) They had rulers and scissors. There was construction paper and tissue paper. They had glue sticks and markers. And there were two hot glue guns the students could use.

I bet you can see what's coming...

"Ouch! That glue is hot."

Well, yeah. When you plug the hot glue gun into the wall, melt the glue, and then touch that melted glue, I'd imagine it's hot.

I didn't say this, however. I feigned concern.

"Are you okay?"

I offered to let the student go to the health office. I'm not a monster. I even suggested using the restroom and running cold water over any burns. But the girl didn't get burned. She had just not been as careful as she could have been.

Then it happened again. And again. Throughout the day, various students yelped in pain at the hot glue. (The glue guns weren't thrust upon them. They had to choose them and then use them. I imagine the teacher spent some time going over the proper use of them on a previous work day.)

I found this quite entertaining. Does that make me a terrible person?