Students Get All Wrapped Up in the News

Newspapers. Some use them to line hamster cages, others to wipe car windows, some even to read.

At Simi Valley Adventist School, the students Thursday found yet another use: wrapping each other--with the help of some tape--to create fantastic creatures.

“They were horrified, at first,” said teacher Rosalind Edwards about the announcement of the assignment.

“How can you make anything out of newspapers?” she recalled her students asking. “Now they know they can.” The school’s 44 students from kindergarten to eighth grade hovered together in groups in the school gym, wrapping each other with pages from local papers.

When they were done with their one-hour giggle- and grumble-fest, they had created a two-headed monster, a pharaoh, a queen, a mermaid and a horse.

But creating these creatures took a bit of patience--especially for the ones being wrapped.

“I want to rip out of this stuff,” griped second-grader Kevin Jacobsen, standing still, as a girl with long brown hair giggled and tried to cover his face with newspaper. Third-grader Andy Roth, who was Kevin’s other half as a two-headed monster, concurred.

“I hate it,” Andy said. “I’m too hot.”

Toward the middle of the gym, another cluster of pupils attempted to transform two peers into a horse.

First-grader Sheridan Bowser peered out of a hole in the newspaper as her group finished wrapping her from head to toe and added little newspaper ears. Third-grader Kristen Borquez got to play the unenviable part of being the horse’s rear.

“I can’t even see,” Kristen said. To avoid ripping the fragile horse skin, one student barked in military fashion, “one, two, three,” helping the two shuffle across the gym in unison.

The whole point was not just to have fun and use imagination, but to learn lessons in cooperation, Edwards said.

“In a small school you have to learn to work together well or you have too much rivalry,” she said.