Straw Art

Last week I put together a lesson on the fly. Lunch lady land crossed over into art making world. In our lunch program we (at one time) used straws and a broken dispenser. So when the children would push the lever for the straw, thirty would come out, there would be a scramble every time to catch them and look at them and say? What do I do with these?? The straws would have been touched so they were tossed. It was a frustration that early on I just got rid of them in the serving line. Approximately 40 boxes of 200 straws (most likely a whole case) sat. I tried to brainstorm what could possibly be done, these were straws I had not ordered, and to throw them away seemed wrong, and with all the controversy over straws and the oceans... I decided the best bet was try to put them through one use, creativity. 
So together with the 4th through 8th grade, I supplied them with stiff ribbon, low temp hot glue, and as many straws as they wanted. I encouraged them to research (outside of class) straw art, and come back with ideas. Not surprising many geometric forms came out of their hands. We had been working on a lot of formal drawing this winter so it was a good chance for them to experiment and practice ingenuity. They also learned strength and weakness in structure building.