“Our job is too difficult and too beautiful to do alone.” -Amelia Gambetti, Reggio Emilia
Family Chandeliers are one of my favorite connections to do with families at the beginning of the year. Today, I want to give you a step by step guide on how to make a family chandelier in your own classroom and release your creativity to make it your own!
NOTE: While beads and wire are always a beautiful and highly sought after items for chandeliers, they also can add up to be quite expensive. We will showcase some fabulous alternatives that may trigger your creativity and even encourage your families to add to that!
What you need:
- Loose Parts or beads of any kind
(Examples below)
- Wire that you will cut about 2 ft. long
- A Chandelier base
(Anything you can hang wire from)
- Small printed family pictures
Examples of Loose Parts for Chandeliers!
Washers, Buttons, Macaroni Noodles, Caps drilled with a hole can be great alternative to beads
Wood Cookies drilled with hole (Cut from branch – FREE)
Pinecones found outside (FREE) for wrapping wire around
Tile Samples (FREE from flooring store)
Other Cheap and Economic Alternatives to Beads for Chandelier
Remember to drill a hole in any loose part if not already there or teach children to wrap object
- Corks
- Puzzle Pieces
- Rings
- Sticks
- Shells
- Reels
- Straws
- Buttons
- Tin Foil
- CD’s
- Lids
- Bottle Tabs
- Bangles
- Ribbon
- Chiffon pieces
Notice this teacher used a branch she found outside
What to do:
- Let your children pick beads or other loose parts and put in ziplock bag with a piece of wire
- Place family picture inside the bag
- Send bag home with note for families to work on
(Download Family Chandelier Note)
- Hand completed wire from chandelier base
Optional
- Organize a parent night to complete activity in your class. Parents bring their supplies to school.
- Allow child to share their special wire piece in front of class and hang afterwards
Love the unique items that showcase the classroom family
Wooden Letters on end for the first name
A child’s favorite car strung with his family on the wire will be a memory he will cherish
There are many ways to create a positive family community within your classroom. What are your favorite ways? Make sure to download the family chandelier parent letter!
Hoping to do this next week with my kiddos! I can’t seem to download the family note? Could you take a look at it? Thanks so much!
I love this idea and did something like it for
Thanksgiving, “What are you grateful for?”
I would love to start my year with this…I too am having trouble downloading the letter.
Thank you for your blog and sharing.
I will reload the letter!
Thank you Sally for your fantastic inspirational
Ideas & down loads
Donna West Yorkshire uk
You are most welcome, Donna!
We used this idea to create mobile of wishes. I sent home a note with a few basic supplies and encouraged families to be as creative as they wished, or to ask me for a few more materials if they did not have them available. I included a photo of each child, substitutable with one from home, and asked both the students and the parents to set a goal. We were all so pleased with the result!
What a beautiful idea, Lara! I know each family treasured that time together.
Hi! I love this idea. Can you please reload the family letter?
Hey Sue! Scroll to the very bottom of the page, you will see in green letters Download the Family Letter. It should be there!
What gauge wire did you use? Thank you!
I would recommend for the family chandelier gauge to be something that fits through all your beads or materials so it would just be your call! Really any normal wire will work. 🙂
I did something like this for the holidays. Only I used stars. Each child took a star home and on one side put a picture of their family and on the other side they talked about their holiday traditions. It was really cool