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Mrs. Swinnerton's
Class
St. Alphonsus ECS
Our initial interest in dragons
and castles started with endless readings of Robert Munsch's The Paper Bag
Princess, and a field trip to the Citadel to see The Paper Bag Princess
and Other Tales.
After seeing the dragon in the play, and learning how he
was just built out of someone's idea, the students decided that their own ideas
were good enough to build a dragon as well. Thus began the long process of
building our classroom dragon.
Our first task was to brainstorm
what we wanted our dragon to look like. Each student created a picture of their
vision. We then used these pictures to show our principal that we were committed
to this project, and to convince him to supply the necessary funds so we could
purchase the materials. We also used the pictures to determine which elements
were the "top priority" to include in our model.
Sample Dragon Pictures
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Eric thought that our dragon should breathe
fire. |
Mai-Thy's thought our dragon needed wings. |
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Myles envisioned a more iguana like dragon. |
Dustin thought it was important for our
dragon to stand on two hind legs. |
Beyond the wooden framework, which was constructed by a
volunteer, the students were responsible for the entire process. The first few
days went by smoothly- I was amazed at how well the children were able to cut
and mold the chicken wire to the frame.
As we moved into using plastic wrap over
the wire, things got a little more harried, as the wrap tended to stick to the
children better than to the chicken wire!
The next few weeks are those that I am
sure the parents wish to forget- paper maché. Because our dragon was so tall,
paper maché was constantly dripping on the students'
heads. The students were in protective plastic, but the paper maché seemed to
find its way onto their clothing no matter what. Everyone was grateful when we
finally got to the painting and detailing stage.
As we finished the final details, Christmas vacation was
upon us. Our dragon was painted green, and the students added wings, some
magic flying cylinders to the tail, eyes, and some very scary tissue paper
fire. We took a vote, and the name "Peter Pan" was the winner. It was suggested
because 1) our dragon was green just like Peter Pan's clothes and 2) our dragon
could fly just like Peter Pan (Apparently he only did it after school and on
weekends). We all looked forward to coming back from Christmas Vacation and
taking a final group picture with Peter.
When vacation ended, we all learned a sad lesson about
dragons. They may be fierce, but they are no match for a little mouse family .
Several mice had made their home for the winter inside the dragon and eaten
large chunks of his skin. Peter Pan could fly no more, and had to be removed
from the classroom.
Pictures
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The students first used unifix cubes to measure how much
chicken wire they needed to cut for the frame. |
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Each student took a turn cutting through the chicken wire
with wire snips. While the other students were waiting for their turn,
they helped out by holding the chicken wire flat on the floor.
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After we had wrapped our frame in the wire, it looked like
this. |
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The plastic wrap stage came next. Mrs. Grumley and Myles
are smiling because this stage is almost finished! |
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Myles and Mai-Thy were responsible for the
mid-section and arm of our dragon. |
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Amethyst was brave enough to volunteer to paper
maché the dragon's mouth. |
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We used all of the green paint in the school in our
attempts to paint our dragon. Once the green tempura had dried, we then
"aged" our dragon by adding some gold spray paint. It gave him a shiny and
more scaly look. |
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If the mice hadn't eaten our dragon, our final picture
would be here! |
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