The Scariest Scarecrow
As we mentioned in our last post, the birds around our yard have been helping themselves to the baby plants in our garden! We tried a few things to protect them:
First, we covered them with milk crates. We quickly noticed, however, that some of the crates have big holes on the sides that birds may be able to sneak through, and that we didn’t have enough to protect all of our plants. Next, the children resorted to waving their arms and shouting every time they saw a bird come near our garden. This is when Lindsey posed the question, “You’re doing a very good job scaring away the birds, but what is going to happen when you go home? What’s going to scare the birds away after you leave? We should think of something.”
Two children were quick to answer. Berkeley enthusiastically shouted, “A scarecrow!!!” simultaneously with Elliott, who shouted, “Dracula!!!” With these two creative answers, our solution became immediately clear: we must make a Dracula scarecrow. Berkeley and Elliott got some paper and markers right away and began drawing up a plan. We love this thoughtful work from the children, and we often encourage them to plan and prepare before undertaking a large task, introducing and practicing the beginnings of hypothetical thought.
With the plans drawn up, we discussed a materials list. We needed some clothes (black, of course), a frame (wood), something for a head, and straw to fill it up. We sourced a bag from the shed to make the head, and after a generous black shirt donation from Sean, we had everything we needed! Elliott let us know about his expertise on Dracula, so we got him a permanent marker and he got to work on drawing a face for the head. He added spooky sharp teeth, a “bowtie,” and some blood, and he noticed that the bag he was using had a small tag on the drawstring. It seemed like Elliott felt that he needed to use this tag as an opportunity to make the scarecrow even scarier, as his eyes lit up and he turned to Lindsey and asked, “How do you spell terror?”
After writing the scariest word he could think of, Elliott was done with the face and we started packing the head with straw.
Later that afternoon, we gathered some of the leftover wood from when we made Frenson’s cage and we took a look at our plans. We settled on making a cross shape, and the kids wanted to make sure it was “so tall.” They expressed that they wanted it “even taller than Lindsey,” who volunteered to lay down on the ground to be measured. After stretching our measuring tape and reading the numbers, we decided on 66 inches (I’m 5’8”, but close enough…). Berkeley volunteered to be our scribe and wrote the number 66 at the top of her scarecrow plan. Next, we stretched the measuring tape across our longest piece of wood, found the number 66 again, and Berkeley used her pencil to make a mark for cutting. Sean used the saw to cut it right where the children marked, and then we got to screwing our two pieces of wood together with his help.
With our frame completed, we worked together to carry it into the garden, decided on the perfect spot right in the middle, and dressed Dracula with his black shirt. We tied the collar and the sleeves with twine and got to stuffing! Van, Berkeley, and Dominic worked so hard making sure it was all the way full. When it was done, we tied off the bottom and erected our scarecrow in our garden! After attaching the head to the top, we took one last look at the plan and noticed that we were missing the triangle cape. We searched through our fabric scraps and found the perfect piece of black, which we tied around his neck. Berkeley used some scissors to trim it into just the right shape, and our scarecrow was complete!
Dracula lives in our garden permanently now, and is doing a fantastic job keeping the birds away. Great job, everyone! Your idea worked!