Bag People

Bag People!

I tend to be a sort of bag person.  I have a lot of bags and I carry them often because I am a teacher.  Lunch bag, school bag, recyclable bag filled with a project, grocery bag filled with treats . . . I am on my third or fourth rolling cart because all the bags BREAK the carts.  The carts aren’t meant for all those bags, apparently.

I am also QUEEN OF CARRY ALL THE GROCERY BAGS FROM THE CAR INTO THE KITCHEN IN ONE TRIP AND ONE TRIP ONLY.

For real.

I hate making trips so I just load up all sixteen grocery bags, balance it all somehow, and MAKE IT HAPPEN.

But, today, I’m talking about my BAG PEOPLE PROJECT!  🙂

We always make Bag People for our Open House.  Our Bag People sit in our chairs while we take our guests on a guided tour of our classroom!

Here’s why we use a brown paper bag!

The bag slides over the chair so that the “person” doesn’t slide off or slip down!  The bag helps it stay in place!

I go to my local grocery store and buy stuff (per usual) and then when I am checking out, I ask if I can pretty please have 30 (or 32 last year!) paper bags.  I say that I am a but-a-lowly teacher working on a project and I would be forever grateful.  I might tilt my head to the side and look a little Mary Poppin-ish.  I also put my hand over my heart and say I’m happy to pay for them which always results in Oh no, of course you won’t pay for them, please take as many as you need!

I get the bags every year without a problem.

One year, the manager came out and gave me an entire ream or thingamajig of them, and I didn’t have to ask for bags for the next couple of years!  I told Steve I was pretty sure he was flirting with me.  😉

A long time ago, I drew a T-shirt onto a large piece of construction paper (12×18) and then my teammate makes copies.  I do not know how she does this, but she uses the xerox copier, something called manual mode, and feeds the large construction paper through the machine, and somehow it all works out.  It is her speciality!  My speciality is using the book binder.  We all have our gifts.  😉

I did the same for the jeans.  Just free handed the template and my teammate took care of the rest.

One of my other teammates does not have anything copied ahead of time for her kiddos.  She puts out construction paper and they design their own T-shirts and jeans — any size, any shape, etc.  It’s like a free for all.  I’m more of a control freak and would rather not hear fourteen to nineteen kids ask me to help them, and then later, have the remaining twelve or so kids tell me they messed up, and can I please help them, too.

So either way you do it . . . with a template or just here’s some paper, have at it, it’s a super fun project and every year, my kids LOVE it!

We usually do it over a couple of days because it takes awhile.

Once all of the shirts, jeans, heads, arms, and shoes are all assembled, I just staple them to the paper bags.  I’ve tried glue in the past, but it’s just annoying because it takes a lot of glue.  A LOT of glue.  And for some reason, even when I say DO NOT BE AFRAID OF THE GLUE, USE A LOT OF GLUE, NO PART OF YOUR PROJECT SHOULD BE FLAPPING IN THE WIND, I just have way too many projects with flappers.

I can’t stand flappers.

GLUE IT ALL DOWN, I say!

And then I hear But I’m out of glue!

Or I can’t find my glue!

Or My glue is dried out!

Or we actually don’t have any glue left at all because it’s the end of the year and there you go.

So staple the people to the bag.  You can thank me later.

Here’s mine:

So fun, right?!

I would love to offer you the templates but, like I said, they are on huge 12×18 construction paper and won’t fit on my scanner.  But let me tell you — if I can draw the outline of a T-shirt, so can you.  I mean it.  Really.

🙂