Decorating the "cage"

 

These are are some pic's I saved from back in the beginning of May.  The giant flowers were inspired by the beautiful flowers that were in Painted Paper's May 2nd blog.  Every May our school hosts a Senior Brunch for the seniors in our community.  The students make decorations, place mats, center pieces, cards, etc. for the brunch.  Our PTO moms make and donate all the food, the classes sing songs...  You get the idea!  The Senior Brunch is held in our multipurpose room (gym/auditorium/cafeteria).

In the multi-purpose room are two "Cages".  Long, long ago there were plywood rooms that were the storage/offices of myself and the music teacher when we were on carts (this was about 15 years ago – we were on carts for about six years then).  At one point the fire marshall came in and said they had to come down because they were a fire hazard (personally I always felt the masses of art supplies were a bigger hazard, but whatever!).  Enter the "Cages"! In their place the district installed two metal "Cages".  Mind you, it was still my office and storage at the time and now all of my chaos was easily viewed by all.  The dust that accumulated inside was unbelievable! Eventually the music teacher and I were given a room and released from the confines of our "Cages"!

The "Cages" are now storage for many different things, and still are the biggest eyesore in the room!  In order to "Beautify" these "Cages" for the Senior Brunch, I had the students paint giant pieces of oak tag that I turned into flowers and dragonflies.  I had my first graders paint the field of flowers that blended in with the "Cages" to cover the strip at the bottom and "Tah-dah!"  The "Cages" were transformed!

These decorations were such a hit, that they were left up for the rest of the year and are still up.  I placed two other flowers on the doorways into the multipurpose room.  The two first grade teachers that could see them from their room were sad when I took them down. Those are now decorating the front hallway bulletin board for the summer.  My principal loved it so much that she wants me to decorate it for the seasons next year!  Guess that means pumpkins and sunflowers for the Fall!  Hope everyone is enjoying their time off from school, our district finished on Tuesday! :)

The entrance to the mulit-purpose room.

Close-up side view. I popped the petals out because they didn't fit and they looked better that way!

Dragonfly on the wall.  Used duct tape to stick them to the doors.
I was worried they would fall down but they were stuck like glue!
 

Dragonfly!  The kids kept asking to take him home!  He is going on the walls of the art room next year!

You can see the lovely cage walls behind this side view!

Watercolor bleed on dippity dye paper for the centers.

 First grades painted flowers!  Quick, Simple & Beautiful!