Making a tree!

I had a wonderful lady come and help me yesterday.  She is the tree expert.  Originally, I was planning this big elaborate jungle tree, but decided last minute that I wanted a palm one instead for the kids to read under in the literacy center.  It worked out awesome.  We work very well together, and could probably go into the tree making business.  So much for teaching. ;)  Here are some pictures of the fabulous tree that we made:

The trunk is made out of a left over cardboard carpet roll that I went and got from a local carpet store.  All I had to tell them was that I was a teacher and wanted to make a tree, and they were more than happy to hand over the goods.  I mean, what were they going to do with it anyways!?  We had to cut the top down with an x-acto knife because it was a little tall, but that's okay.  After that, we rolled it in brown butcher paper as a base, and then cut some strips of paper to fit around the trunk in pieces, and scrunched each strip in order to give the bark some texture.  We used a hot glue gun to glue those on, and they worked out wonderfully!  I will update this post next week with a closeup of the texture on the trunk so you can see our handy work.  For the leaves, I just free handed the shape I wanted, and traced on green butcher paper.  (shiny side down) We used 8 leaves in total, I believe.  I painted the leaf veins with a light brown  tempera paint, and cut diagonal slits up the leaves to give them a "palmy" look.  After that was finished, we murdered an umbrella. (Took the fabric off, ripped off the wire ends...etc) All that was left of the umbrella was the metal star shape thing at the top!  I got shards of steel in my hand from doing that.  If you ever decide to murder an umbrella, learn from my mistakes and wear leather gloves. I taped pencils to the end of each star point in order to give the leaves somewhere to lay other than flat against the sides.  We used the piping hot glue gun to glue the leaves at the top, and after two or three times trying to figure out the best placement for the leaves and a couple burnt fingers later, we were done!  Woo Hoo!  

Seriously though...if you want a tree for a small charge...let me and Rachel know.  We've got your back ;)