Inspired by the story of the famous Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade told in the book Balloons Over Broadway by author Melissa Sweet, young readers at Churchville-Chili’s Chestnut Ridge Elementary School created their own video version of the famous parade, complete with fanciful balloons and entertaining commentary.
Second-grade teacher Jodi Piontkowski wanted students to get excited about reading and participate in a memorable learning experience. She worked with Enrichment Specialists Andrea Lynch and Stephanie Ricci to design a special lesson that incorporated reading, analysis and discussion, creative writing, art, science and engineering principles, along with collaboration skills and teamwork.
After reading the book, which tells the story of Tony Sarg, the puppeteer tasked with creating the parade balloons that made the Macy’s event famous, student partners worked together to design their own balloon animals: whimsical giraffes, foxes, flying horses, and lions, to name just a few. They decorated their balloon puppets with a variety of colorful materials, taking care not to pop them. Students also had to consider how they would control and fly their finished balloons, as they were not filled with lighter-than-air helium. Their engineering process was much like that followed by the original parade designer Sarg, who faced the same challenge in the early 1920s before helium was used in his balloons.
After much good-humored trial and error (and a few exploded balloons), team members guided each special balloon as it took flight across a green screen, soon to be replaced by a video backdrop of the actual Macy’s storefront in New York City.
Team members each wrote a description of their parade animal. They took turns recording each other’s scripts as parade day commentary. Teachers pulled the technology pieces together into a final video of the CRS Thanksgiving Day Parade, which can be viewed at https://www.wevideo.com/view/2462923992.
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