Spring Play – Costumes and Props

As I’ve posted over the past couple of weeks, some of the middle school students are putting together three short reader’s theatre plays for the younger children.  The play date is set for next Wednesday, which means I need to get my act together and finish up all the costumes and props we need for the show.  If you haven’t seen my previous posts, the kids are putting on the following shows – Limelight Larry by, Leigh Hodgkinson, Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs by Mo Willems, and The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt.  These are all such great books and the 15 middle schoolers who are helping put this show together are having a really great time together running lines!

So, over the past week, I’ve been busy trying to figure out how we can recreate old costumes into this year’s costumes and how to spend limited money to create anything new we might need.  This year’s pressing need – a peacock costume.  What was I thinking?!?!?!?  But, I think we brought it together fairly well.  It’s currently two pieces of black foam board taped together with dark blue and purple tulle over the top with felt peacock feather “eyes” on top of that.  I’m really happy with the results, but still have to figure out how to attach it to our “Larry.”

I’m also working on a lot of head pieces for the show.  I’ve found that masks don’t work so well, because we practice using some great facial expressions that are then hidden when we use masks.  Masks are also difficult because they are often held up with one hand severely limiting the kids body expressions as well.  These head pieces are actually from a book of patterns making it even easier to create.  So far, I’ve made a bird – I chose a parrot because of the bright colors and I’ve also made the three dinosaurs for the Mo Willems story.   The dinosaurs turned out looking a little meaner than I was planning, but I’m not going to do them over again, I think they’ll work out well.

And finally, how to create crayon costumes without buying the “official” Crayola costumes – easy, use colored t-shirts for each crayon.  The kids really wanted head pieces to create the crayon points, to put their costumes at the next level.  So rather than trying to figure out how to make them, I spend the $5 at a party store and bought 12 birthday hats, some of which I could leave as is, and some I covered with paper to get all the colors I needed.  Are they perfect – not at all, but they’ll work for the show.  Each crayon is only on stage for a minute or so anyway!  It’s all about recreating and trying new things – it usually takes a little time, but saves a lot of money!