School Luau project

Contributed by a viewer.

I'm a kindergarten teacher and for the Week of the Young Child every year (usually in October), we have a Hawaiian Luau.  Each day, we make something we will use at our Luau on Friday.

We make leis just like you said, but we used die cut flowers (for lack of time of having the students color and cut their own) of various colors and asked the children to lay them out on the floor in a pattern and identify the colors before lacing.

We also make grass skirts out of green bulletin board paper. We mark off a line approx. 2" from one edge and have the children cut strips up to that line. (The 2" strip is the waist band.) We then have them glue colored flowers around the waist band. (Again, you can ask them to name the colors and/or make a pattern with their flowers).

We make a pineapple shaped pinata~ by paper macheing around a large oval shaped balloon (do not paper mache over the end where the knot is tied). While the paper mache is drying, we give each child a strip of yellow paper to fringe and a piece of green paper to cut a large leaf. We use the yellow fringed paper to cover the dried balloon. Pop the balloon at the top and remove. Fill with candy and/or other trinkets related to the theme. Stuff the paper leaves partially inside the resulting "hole" at the top where the balloon was removed.

We made flowers for the girls to wear in their hair. These turned out beautiful. We gave each child three coffee filters and had them watercolor paint the filters using different bright colors. When all three were complete and dry, we laid them on top of each other, and picked them up by pinching the center. We then wrapped a colored pipe cleaner around the pinched center and fluffed out the flower part. The boys, not to be left out, also wanted to make these beautiful flowers.  Instead of putting flowers in their hair, they tied them around their ankles.

We also made a pineapple slush type drink that you mentioned. We purchased plastic coconut cups that we wash and reuse for this activity each year. We also spent a day practicing the hula dance and discussed some of the meanings of some of the movements in the dance. We also e-mailed a class in Hawaii and told them of our activities. They sent pictures and ideas and we sent pictures of our luau.  It was a lot of fun.

Sounds like it was a great week!  Thanks for sending this in.