Making Tie-Dye Shirts

Happy Thursday! As our Drama and Movie Making Week of summer school is winding down, we’re finishing preparations for our performance tomorrow!

MORNING ACTIVITIES

We continued creating our headbands/masks and different colored shoes for each of the characters we are playing. Those of us adapting The Gruffalo worked on our set design by creating a background based on the illustrations found in the book. We now have a tree with a hollowed-out space for the owl and a small cave for the fox. We also made some nuts for the mouse to eat at the end of the story. We did all this using construction paper.

Most all our props and costumes are ready now!

CIRCLE TIME

We began our circle time by discussing all the things we have been working on this week in preparation for our movie! There’s just one thing that we haven’t finished yet…

Our tie-dye shirts!

Previously, we used rubber bands to tie up our shirts in various ways. Now it’s time for the next step! What are we going to do?

Th: We’re going to put them in magic water!

What will happen to the shirts if we put them in magic water?

Sh: The magic water will change the shirt to the color we want!

Gr: I think change to black!

Ty: It will change to brown! Black and brown!

We all gathered around the table to start the process. Vieda showed us the magic water and asked us if we knew what it was.

Sh: It’s for the washing machine!

Ty: Senzai! For washing machine.

The bottle looked like the laundry detergent that we’ve seen in our homes. Vieda told us that it is something called bleach. At first, we thought she said beach! Maybe the magic water came from the ocean!

We quickly found out that it was not water. In fact, if anyone drank it, we would need to go to the hospital immediately.

Sh: Is it dangerous?

We learned that bleach is very dangerous. We don’t want to get it on or in our body in any way. We let Vieda handle the bleach; she poured a little bit of the bleach in a bottle of water, shook it up, and poured it over our shirts.

After a minute or so, we smelled something.

Re: It smells like a bathroom!

The smell was strong, and most of us plugged our noses and moved to the back of the room to avoid the smell! We set a timer to let the shirts soak for 15 minutes. If they sat in the bleach for too long, it would destroy the shirt!

Wi: You mean this (shirt sleeve) will break?

It didn’t take long for the shirts to begin changing colors. We were very surprised at how strong bleach is! We were a little nervous about it and always kept a safe distance, even though our curiosity kept pulling us to move in for a closer look.

From there, Vieda washed the shirts by hand and then put them in the washing machine. We were able to get a glimpse of what the bleach did to our shirts before they went into the washing machine. Each of our shirts reacted to the bleach in their own way, creating unique designs and colors!

We can’t wait to wear them tomorrow during our performances!

MOVIE REHEARSAL

Today, we had our first rehearsal in front of an audience! Each team took turns acting out their scenes while the other team watched. It went very well! Our actors/actresses came prepared with most of their lines memorized and gave great performances. Members of the audience participated in singing the songs along with the actors, which made it fun for all!

We are very excited to put on our adaptations of Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes and The Gruffalo tomorrow!

Have a nice evening! See you all tomorrow!

Love,

Flowers XOXO