Heading up the decorating team for the school carnival this year was no small animal.  I, of course, couldn’t help myself from taking a walk on the wild side and going overboard!  The team and I didn’t monkey around when it came to creating a safari themed atmosphere!

Would you like to go on a safari? Let me take you on a trip.  Let’s start at the entrance to the Safari.  The school has a Knight mascot and PTA years ago created a rock castle wall to use as carnival decorations.  We draped green and brown paper vines through the castle wall with paper monkeys, sloths, and tucans hanging from the vines.  The 1st grade classes had done a rain forest lesson, so we displayed the students paper animals.  It was fun to watch the kids reactions to seeing their creations on display.

I created the tall trees by spray painting carpet rolls and adding leaves.  To make the leaves, I cut out shapes from different shades of green construction paper.  I then taped a long piece of wire to one side of the paper.  At the top of the carpet roll, I shoved in a piece of floral foam and pierced the leaf wires into the foam.

Next, we come to the main table area, which was turned into a jungle by drooping green vines throughout.  Again, we hung students paper animals from the vines, as well as tissue paper flowers made by a team member and a few cobras that I created.

These cobras were created using girls diamond print knit tights.  I cut the tights in half, and re-sewed them together length wise to get a VERY long tube of tights.  I stuffed the tights with old magazines, sewed on beads for eyes, and a piece of red felt for the tongue.  The snake on the left is wrapping around another tree I created.

We hung strings of white lights, and a team member added tan cupcake papers to each light.  They looked like strings of paper lanterns.

Moving towards the cake walk area, we had animal cut outs that I purchased at Walmart.com.  A team member created “madagascar” type boxes tied with white twine and stickers.  The same team member created amazing wood pole signs.

In the center of the cake walk, I created a pond, with blue paper, plants borrowed from a local nursery, and plastic flamingos.

This might have been the highlight for the students, along with the “royal flush game”!  I created a cardboard safari jeep and zip tied it to a chain link fence.  Driving the safari jeep was a picture of the school principal, and the vice principal was his passenger.  This display included green vines, students paper animals, & snakes made from paper and snake print duct tape I found at The Dollar Tree.  More carpet roll trees, animal cutouts, boxes, and another wood pole sign to complete the display.

The safari jeep was such a hit, that it still remains in the school cafeteria stapled to the wall!

I hope you enjoyed your safari ride!  Happy “animaling” around!

“Wonder what I will come up with next”…