The Angel Caper

I never come to the Christmas season without remembering the year we made angels which was many years ago.

As my teaching partner and I sat down to plan out our Christmas project for our two classrooms of third graders, one of us had seen this beautiful angel and we decided to tackle it!! It seemed doable, and fairly inexpensive since it was mostly made of things around the house.

We began collecting for our magnificent project!!

old sheets, doilies, odds and ends of trims, old panty hose

We supplied the cardboard needed, as well as the styrofoam heads and the spray paint. We also bought a large spool of white crinkle type paper ribbon.

Finally the day arrived to begin the project. Friday afternoons had been set aside for working on this project. Our mother helpers came to help. (We couldn't have done it without them!)

We began with our forms, which were made from cardboard half circles rolled into a round pyramid looking thing. That was the easy part. (as I look at the pictures, I forgot to add that the arms were taped to the cardboard form before the actual work began.)

Next.......each kid got a nice square of donated sheet...and then the fun began!!

We dipped the sheet pieces in buckets of Elmer's glue and water and squeezed it out, and began draping it over the cardboard form.

The mess was beyond description--oh! I forgot to say that we did it in the cafeteria and we had Joyce, our cook, breathing down our necks not to leave a mess!

Suddenly it was time for buses, so each kid took their wet, draped angel and we found places all over our rooms to sit them to dry. After the kids were on their buses, my teaching partner and I went back to the cafeteria and scrubbed tables, benches and floors, until it was spotless. We were quite afraid of our cook, whose bark was really worse than her bite, but we had a healthy respect for her.

Besides we were well brought up girls whose Mothers had taught us to clean up our messes!

We worked on these angels for several Fridays....

And one day it was time to spray paint them gold! We did that after the kids went home as that was more than third graders could have or would have, handled well!

The next Friday, we added the bows and a little Christmas bling, and they were complete....and truly works of art. No two were the same.

We looked at each other the day they took them home, all wrapped and ready to present to their families and said, "NEVER AGAIN!!!"


Then we began to run into future parents in the hallways, and they always stopped us and told us they could hardly wait until their child was in third grade as they loved the angels we had made!! Then we had to break it to them gently, that it was a one time project!!

Several years later I had a Holiday Craft Sale in my home and one of the things that I made was fourteen of those angels!! That was absolutely the last time I ever did angels! My two that I had made with the students hung around for many Christmas' until I gave them to my daughter, Tammy, when she got her first apartment about five year ago. I was happy to part with them and she loves them!!

Here they are as part of the mantle collection at my old house many years ago.

In counting backwards, I figure that we made these about twenty eight years ago! (No wonder I forgot they had arms!!)