I tried milk jugs. I bought buckets. I looked at paper mache, paper folding, and paper crumbling. Duct tape had looked promising. In the end, plain old boring cardstock was chosen.
A month and a half ago, I offered to help my eight year old's teacher to come up with an activity to go with the book How to Train Your Dragon that they read in class. Silly me. I thought it would be easy. Let me just say that finding a cheap, easy way to make Viking helmets does not exist. Oh, and they aren't cheap to purchase, either. There are plenty of ways to make them, but none of them are good for a room full of 8 year olds to do in 15 minutes. So, I went the simple, boring route and cut out the helmet and horns from cardstock for the kids to decorate and glue together before I stapled them to bands around their heads.
I then went through something similar to make dragons for them. Stuffed paper dragons, foam cut-outs, or even purchasing cheap ones. Decorate with feathers, crepe paper? In the end, I went with photocopies of coloring pages.
It doesn't matter what I chose. The kids will have fun as long as I sell it. I planned to have everyone give himself a Viking name, put their individual touches on the helmets, then go on a dragon hunt. I'd take them on a hike through and around school to the dragon den. Each child would find his own dragon, and we'd head back. The dragons would of course then wake up, and we'd have to run for our lives, just like the book. We'd end up back in the classroom, where the kids would then decorate the dragons and name them. To wrap up, any child that chose could intro himself and his dragon to the class.
Great plan. I am excited to do it. Then, at 5:00 am, 9 year old vomits in his bed. Plans are shaken. Maybe if I let him sleep, he'll feel better. He can just stay with the younger boys with my friend who was going to watch them. Great idea, until said friend called to say he had a child vomit in the car in the drop-off lane at school.
So, after almost two months of preparations, I had to send the supplies into school with the eight year old. His teacher was going to carry on without me. So much for my Viking name.
