We got a note from school on celebrating World Book Day. As a part of the celebrations, kids had to dress up as their favorite character from a book and talk about it in the class. Without a blink, my girl picked up "Room on the Broom" and declared that she wanted to be the witch. And why? "Because she is a kind witch. And you know Mumma, she also looses her things like I do. And she has friends who help her find her lost things and save her from the dragon. Even my friends are like that." I was taken aback by her correlation and gave in.
This witch from "Room on the Broom" is easy to dress up but
this video from
Little Button Diaires made it easier. We used things available at home to dress up - Her blue frock (instead of witch's skirt), red t-shirt for the top, granny's back dupatta for cloak. We made the hat from black chart paper (laying around for months) and the plait from orange wool as per the video. My girl made the witch's wand from used milk straws and felt stars. We were stuck a bit on the broom ... "should we attach a big stick to the broom?" "will it be heavy for her to carry?" "what if we skip the broom?" ... finally thought of making a broom just for representation and we made an origami broom using newspaper ! It was fun preparing all this. Thankfully it didn't take anything more than an hour a day for two days to make all these.
We tried the costume with all accessories last night to ensure that it doesn't hamper her movements ..."Mumma this is an important instruction from the school. We have to follow it." My LO seemed satisfied with it all. Just as I was readying her to sleep, "Mumma ... we forgot to make the brooch!"
"Which brooch?"
"The witch's brooch.. She wears one.. yellow flower with a green dot one on her cloak. Wait let me show you." And yes ! I didn't notice it before.
"So what do we do? It is already 9.30pm and we have to sleep." - Mumma
"Yes. Can you please help me a little? I will draw the flower and the dot on the craft paper, can you cut it and glue it on the cloak when I'm asleep? " - LO
Wow! when did she grow up to solve a problem on her own??
The accessories looked like this -
Here is how my girl looked all set to go...
As she came back today, I was excited to hear how the day went by. She told only older kids were asked to talk about the character they had dressed up in. She learned a lesson - to ask if she wanted something. She was super happy as she was the only witch and everyone recognized her as that! Seeing other kids today, some forgotten characters came back to us like Cat in the Hat, Clifford, and Dory.
This dress-up event meant we read the book over and over... observed the
characters... talked about the story. We also thought about which
character could be represented using reusable stuff. And we crafted
together... All-in-all a wonderful thought and time well-spent.
Do get a copy of this wonderful book by our favorite author Julia Donaldson and also watch the movie
here.
