It's Cool in the Furnace

This is what I've been working on for awhile:

It's a wall of flames.  Though this is an in-progress pic, all squares in the grid are now full and we are DONE!  The squares at the top are all song titles in the musical It's Cool in the Furnace, a retelling of the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from Daniel.  The angels on the left side each have one of the 12 first through fourth grade classes on therm.  They're representative of the angel of the Lord that appeared in the furnace to watch over the boys.  For each song learned, a class earned a flame (you know, from the fiery furnace) to keep track of our progress throughout the quarter.  Well, this past Thursday evening it all came to fruition and my elementary kids put on their 8th musical production since I've been at Eastside.  It was a blast:

I don't usually post school stuff on here but Ryan got some pictures so I thought I'd share.  As I said, this year it was It's Cool in the Furnace, a musical written in 1973.  My sisters did it when they were little in the 70's or 80's and then I played the role of Daniel when our church in Connecticut put it on in the 90's.  I love biblical musicals like this that are timeless and tell the story well.  My kids, in 2012, loved it so much and some of their parents were in the same thing way back when...so fun:)

The parents costumed their own children based on some simple suggestions I sent home (using a pillowcase or dad's old shirt with the cuffs and collar chopped off) and everyone looked great!

Kazoos were necessary for Nebuchadnezzar's many fanfare entrances but they had to be easily accessible...so I fashioned a lanyard out of yarn for one and had my fabulous three 8th grade assistants replicate it 170 times over.

Here are the main characters in our story...from right to left, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach (played proudly by a girl), and Abednego.  When I chose this show for the year, I'd forgotten that there were only 2 speaking roles--Daniel (a narrator) and King Neb.  That posed a bit of a problem since the whole fourth grade is promised the task of executing the drama portion of our program.  I took the two and split it into enough roles for 31 fourth graders and all was well.

Our school's athletic director, Coach Jones, graciously accepted the role of Neb and did an excellent job scaring all the children and then being humbled by God.  He's pictured here with his sidekicks:

I made and hung some cardboard flames in the baptistry and, along with some fun lighting by my friend David, that became our furnace.  Here are the boys dancing in the "cool" furnace:

And here's where the angel of the Lord showed up:

The show ends with a goose-bump-inducing power ballad of "Let the People Praise".  I told my kids they'd be waving gold ribbon but instead had some white chiffon on hand.  I cut it into strips and realized the day before that it just looked like they were waving toilet paper in Jesus' name...not the regal praise I was looking for but it worked and maybe people didn't see what I did...maybe.

Some TP praise:

Now shifting focus entirely to Guys and Dolls which should be a blast as well...I'll be back to real life in about a month:)