Not-So-Scary Scarecrow

Several years ago, we made a form for a scarecrow. I use it every year at school and, eventually, the plywood had split and it was time to make another one.

B used the template from the first one to cut the new one.

 

The new one got two coats of white paint left over from when we painted the bathroom. So we touched up around the sink while we were at it!

After spending time looking at scarecrow faces, I ended up sketching my own. I painted it with craft paint left from other projects. He was going to have a yellow nose, but when I opened the bottle, it had dried up. So he has a brown one. (Please save the jokes!) I moved the eyes down from the old one, as the hat often would hide them.

 

B added the old PVC pole-holder to the back. It is attached with two bolts through the front.

 

The stuffed shirt goes around the frame and the stick goes down through one stuffed leg.

One year, I made the mistake of using a bale of hay to stuff the scarecrow. I always recycle the straw as mulch in the garden. That year and for some time after, I had to battle bahia grass that had sprouted from the hayseeds! It was awful! Now, I stick to pine straw, which seems regionally appropriate anyway and makes fine mulch.

So this morning, B brought in the bale of pine straw and kindly dug a hole with the post-hole-digger in the clay. I had a parent volunteer to help direct the stuffing and assembly. It was her first scarecrow, as well as a first for all of the children. We all had a blast.

 

Because our classroom garden is just outside the lunchroom, the whole school gets to see it each day.

When we were walking up to car-pickup after school today, a large flock of crows flew over. I said they were just coming to check out our scarecrow to see if he was scary enough. The boy beside me said very seriously, "I don't think he is scary enough. We should have made him stick out his tongue!"