Week 10: Final Product!
Mae b -
This week, I have been busy creating my final presentation and working on my final product. As I’ve mentioned, my final product is going to be the Reggio Emilia-inspired birthday lanterns.
They’re made by dipping yarn in glue and then wrapping the yarn around the balloon. Then it dries, you pop the balloon, and just the yarn is left behind in a balloon shape! On the kids’ birthdays, they can decorate the birthday lantern with ribbons and other items and put a little tea light inside. The lanterns are going to hang in a classroom in GalaMundi’s new location.
They took way longer than I thought they would! I made 10, and it took about 30 minutes for each. It was a challenge – I don’t think of myself as a particularly crafty person. I was also surprised by how much glue I used. I had to go to Walmart to buy another gallon of Elmer’s when I ran out.
They’re going to turn out really pretty, though!
In-keeping with that, I want to share something exciting about the new space. Trinity Heights used to have a preschool with 180 kids in it, and Elsa is only going to have around 40. She’s only using part of the available space – in fact, she could probably triple the amount of students she serves and Trinity Heights would still have extra classrooms. So in the future, Elsa is hoping to turn one of the rooms into an atelier! An atelier is a Reggio Emilia concept: it’s an art room! Maybe one day, the kids will make their own birthday lanterns in the art room. Actually, probably not, because it’s pretty involved. Dipping the yarn in glue and wrapping around the balloon requires a fair bit of precision. And the balloon gets heavy with all the yarn! Probably too difficult for a toddler…but they can definitely do other art!! I hope Elsa has the chance to have the atelier sometime down the road.
A bit more about the process of making the lanterns…after I have wrapped all the colors of yarn I want around the balloon, I tie a string around the balloon’s knot and then hang it up on the ceiling of my garage. (I made a huge mess of my garage). It dries for 48 hours, and then it comes out all dry. The balloon has deflated, detaching from the yarn, but the yarn keeps it shape. I pop and remove the balloon. I did come across an unexpected wrinkle – there is a lot of excess dried glue in between the yarn. Elsa said she has a trick for removing it, though, so she’ll help me with that when I bring the lanterns to the new space.
Here are photos!
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