The Philippines (Spring Festival Part II)

My three-year-old's class had the Phillipines for his country and in the Philippines, they have beautiful flowery celebrations. I took this picture of a book the teachers were working with and wanted to do something like this.

But how?

So I'm walking through JoAnn Fabric and I spot a little foam crown and I think, "Hmmmm...."

I find some fake flowers, went home, and came up with this:

I took inexpensive fake flowers, pulled them off the stems and poked them through the foam and hotglued them in there so they'd stay. It was so simple, I actually did one of them sitting in the parking lot of their school waiting for them to get out and glued it at home.

That little cord thingy goes around the back of the little girl's heads to hold them in place, I seriously couldn't have found a cooler thing to use for a headpiece! And they were $1 each!

I couldn't wait to get it to school to try it on a little girlhead, so I had to use the closest head possible.

Hooray! It works! (ps. we're in a shirtless phase these days. Not "we," actually, just him.)

He didn't mind being the model but made it clear to me that he's "not a princess, mommy."

This is how it looked at the festival:

We didn't even have to make the costumes, I was walking through Toys R Us on a completely unrelated birthday present mission and passed by this beautiful costume and there was only one left. It was $15. But there were tons of them online and free shipping! Hooray! I couldn't have made these for that cheap!

No one minded that they were actually "Bollywood" costumes, they just wanted them to be "colorful" and colorful it was! The parents were thrilled and the little girls loved being princesses.

We scoured for costumes online for boys/men and saw that they were always pretty plain except for either a sash or a scarf, so we went with an orange sash that my mom made (thanks mom!) I found inexpensive orange party taffeta fabric (and had a coupon) and we cut it out into strips and sewed them.

Of course none of the boys wanted to wear it.

And my boy, who was the star of the show in last year's spring festival and sang this year's "Planting Rice" song at home day in and day out, got total stagefright come performance time. Oh well.

Sash not on, not picking up shaker, not singing, must stare and say nothing. Maybe if I don't move, no one will see me.

That was actually pretty funny because he's usually pretty animated. Oh well!

Anyway for the rest of the festival, the "Jeepney":

A beach community:

And a working volcano that one of the middle schoolers made for the little people class that my little guy is shoving fake money into in his post-cupcake stupor.

(Notice the sash is already off. So glad my mom worked on this for hours!)

One of the teachers also made this delicious chicken noodle dish (we all forgot it was Friday during Lent and chowed on it) and we had traditional Philippines music playing in the background.

I absolutely love Spring Festival at this school and how the children learn all about other cultures and the world. I'll have to upload some video so you can get the actual feel of it.

But I'm darned proud of those headpieces!!! Only wish I could've kept one to wear myself! 
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If you missed Part I of the Spring Festival, 20 Tiny Lincolns is here.