A few weeks ago Big J's teacher asked me to make some decorations for their class assembly. I was so happy since long ago I toyed with the idea of becoming an elementary school teacher and one of the things that excited me about teaching was the thought of decorating my own classroom. Which is probably not the best reason to go into teaching and instead I switched gears and spent most of my 20's conducting research and writing papers to prepare myself for teaching college students. But life is full of unexpected twists and turns and here I am in Busan, South Korea making decorations for my son's class assembly.
Anyways, back to the decorations! The assembly was based upon their unit of inquiry this term--water. The first thing that came to mind were water drops. The children chose the phrase "Do Not Waste Water" so I made a few signs by printing + cutting out letters and affixing them on to foam board. I took photographs of each of the children, cut out their faces with a circle cutter and glued them on to paper water drops. I also cut out water drops in various sizes and strung them on to a fishing line and hung them.
My favorite decoration to make were the clouds with falling raindrops. The raindrops are reminiscent of the linen leaf chains I used to make. The clouds were made out of white paper, embellished with black cardstock eyes + mouth, stuffed with tissue and machine stitched along the edges. I cut out water drops of varying sizes out of cardstock and then machine stitched them together, varying the length between each drop. Each water drop stream was then attached to the cloud using a needle. Lastly I strung some fishing line through the top of the cloud so that it could be hung from the rafters. I think a fabric version would be perfect for a child's room [this is on my to-do list!]. I had so much fun putting the decorations together and the children really liked them and now the decorations are stored away to be used for next year's assembly!
Sidenote: Big J + his classmates did a fantastic job expressing what they learned about water through music, dance, art, poetry and mini presentations. Here's my drummer boy in action!