DD#2 teaches severe special needs children at a nearly junior high. They have an after-school program called BUDS, which stands for Bridging Unique Differences. This programs provide an opportunity for special needs students to interact with their typical peers in fun activities. The typical peers can also be peer helpers during the regular school day for various activities.
This year, one of the special needs students wrote a script from start to finish, and it was performed at a school fundraiser last night.
DD#2 was recruited to help create many of the decorations and stage props for the production. I was so impressed by them (I am mom, after all), that I thought I would share some of them with you. They decided to use a recycle theme for most of the set. The school saved loads of plastic bottles, and parents contributed even more. She created the sign above with bottle caps.
The students cut up water bottles and made them into flowers. They painted the flowers bright colors, and then the flowers were glued to metal umbrella frames to create fantasy trees. (I thought this was especially creative!) They made eighteen umbrella trees and mounted them on cardboard tube trunks.
Students also built walls using various recycled bottles and the adult staff helped glue them together. The walls were used to line the stage. They made a huge ice cream cone from painted, plastic take out container boxes and the bottoms of two liter bottles. They strung clear plastic bottles on several strings to create a waterfall.
Crowd control ropes were braided from plastic grocery bags.
There was an art show presented at the same time. DD#2 taught her special needs middle school students to draw portraits, and these are some of their results.
She also was recruited to create a design for their t-shirts. I was really impressed by all of the creative ways they used things that were headed for the dump.
The evening was a huge success. They had 300 people attend, 100 more than they expected, and they raised nearly $2,500!
Comments
5 responses to “DD#2’s decorations from recyclables”
Way to go DD#2! I’m sharing this with my friends at Tabor who are in charge of special education.
What a gift she was given by God….amazing. Now…I just need to know why we didn’t know about this performance….(smile).
Someone was watching Mom around the house all those years and it has paid off tremendously for the benefit of the young people she works with so lovingly…
Hi Maria,
What kind of paint did they find that stuck to the plastic so well.
Sandy in the UK
PS sorry to hear about your MIL
Sandy, the decorations they made were just temporary, so they were not concerned with how long the painted plastic would last. As a result, they just used whatever paint was donated or was lying around; mostly tempra paint.