100 years ago tomorrow, April 14th, the luxury passenger liner Titanic sank on her maiden voyage after hitting an iceberg. So in honor of man's fallibility, the window display at my second middle school library is about the Titanic.
I covered the back and far end of the loft bed frame with blue bulletin board paper to give it an undersea look, and cut a smaller wave border for the top. I wrinkled strips of orange paper to create a seaweed effect as a background. I had sewed all the stuffed fish about 4 or 5 years ago when I created an aquarium, and I've used them just about every year for something. From the angle in the photo below, you can see the fan that makes the fish move like they're swimming around.
We laid brown packing paper on the floor to give it an impression of sand, and added items representing things that were on the Titanic-- luggage, glassware, jewelry, a ladder etc. along with sea shells and books on the Titanic or shipwrecks.
Crumpled yellow paper around the life saver ring creates the effect of coral. The ring is authentic-- the name of the boat it came off of is on the other side. I found it at the same house that was throwing away the disassembled loft bed, which has made the best frame for the library displays. We added our own lettering for the RMS Titanic, which stands for Royal Mail Steamer. I first had HMS on it, which stands for Her/His Majesty's Ship, until a student corrected me.
On the side and back of the loft, I added photos of the Titanic, the first telegrams, and some of the survivors along with some interesting questions and answers about the ship and the people aboard.
It makes my day when someone tells me they learned something new or were encouraged to learn more about a topic by looking at the library display.
