3D Hot Air Balloons (And an Elephant in the Bathtub)

My classroom recently went through a big change. Almost all of my kids were 5-years-old, so we opened up a new classroom for them and I got a new crew of 4-year-olds. I had to do some sort of send-off display, and I had to think it up quickly. I decided on hot air balloons.

I've seen many 3D balloons online and I've loved them. I knew I wanted to display them on the wall in the hallway, so I kept the back flat and just made the front 3D. Each child decorated three balloon shapes cut from cardstock.

They decorated them with dot markers. Looking back, I wish I had made them all from white paper so the colorful designs would've shown up better. But at the time I was thinking I wanted a very bright display. To make the balloons, I folded the three pieces in half and glued two halves together and another two halves together. (It's hard to describe, but you'll be able to figure it out when you see the picture. It's very easy to do.) I also drew a little basket on the paper and the kids decorated that with markers. You can kind of see them in the bottom right corner in the picture below.

I originally took pictures of the kids to put in the baskets, but when they got printed they didn't look so great. They all looked a little ghostly. And most of the kids had their hands up in the air and cutting around all those fingers was a pain! So I changed my mind, drew an outline of a person and had the kids color it to look like them.

Then I cut them out and put them in the baskets. I used yarn to attach the balloon to the basket.

I displayed them in the hall with the title, Up Up and Away. (Although I was tempted to use the Dr. Seuss title Oh, the Places You'll Go.)

I also printed out the poem from Rook No. 17.

In the whole wide world

With everyone in it,

You're one of a kind

And the sky is the limit!

And to welcome the new kids into my classroom, I made a display on my door. I copied a bulletin board I found years and years and years ago. An elephant in the bathtub, with the title Off to a Clean Start! The names of the kids are on the bubbles.

I drew it by hand while looking at this picture from Adventures of Room 129. But when I found that picture, I don't think it was attached to a blog. It was several years before that post was even written. I had printed it out and hung on to it all these years. I've always loved it and was glad to have a reason to finally use it!