If you're teaching a cosmetology course that also includes learning about spa features, such as manicures and pedicures and facials, ask your students to pretend a man has reluctantly come into the salon with his significant other. Challenge the students to come up with a spa plan the man will enjoy and then try out a couple of treatments on one other.
Prom is a big time for salons, and sometimes the first time a girl gets her makeup professionally done. You can have an all-female class pair up with one another and write down their expectations of the hairstyle before it is done, and then have pairs practice the prom styles on one another. If your class is mixed, invite high school students from the local community to participate in this exercise by placing an ad at the local high school or asking theater and makeup teachers if there are female students willing to participate. Have each female teenager then evaluate how the hairdo matched with her expectations of a prom hairdo.
Ask each student to pick his favorite character from a book, movie or play. For this exercise, students should pick someone who is either a human or resembles a human. Have students pick a scene from the action of the play, movie or book, and make up another classmate. Ask students to describe why they chose the character they did, and how they interpreted the character's look within the framework of the scene.
Specialty makeup can be requested for events like Halloween, plays or local pageants. Assign each student a specialty face to do, such as a fairy, a mermaid, a vampire or skeleton, and ask the students to make one another up to resemble these persons or creatures. Ask students to come together to discuss their choices at the end of the session.