Halloween Costume Contest for PBS Kids Sprout

Several years ago, my kids wanted to enter into a Halloween costume contest held by PBS kids Sprout. The Contest was to dress like Chica (the little chicken on the Sunny Side up Show on PBS Kids), but both of my kids wanted to participate, so my son dressed up as Kevin (the Sunny Side Up Show host at the time), and my daughter as Chica (the little yellow chicken on PBS Kids). Basically our goal was to re-create the Sunshine barn, which is where the Sunny Side up show took place. Since papier-mache is my choice of medium when it comes to art projects, the kids and I got to work on our contest entry. Below you can see on the left a picture of Kevin; the host of the Sunny Side Up show and Chica the little yellow chicken is to the right of Kevin. Kevin, the host always wore an assortment of fun colorful fruit Hawaiian shirts on the show, the one he is wearing in the picture below is a blue shirt with Orange printed all around.

Contest Inspiration

You can see below all the fun we had creating this costume contest entry. Oh, and best of all, my kids WON! Yay! They received a big basket filled with all sorts of goodies from PBS Kids Sprout.

We pretty much started with plain white paper, markers and some tempera paint.

Our Handmade backgrounds

We used lots of big white paper, tempra paints and boxes to create the barn background. I cut strips out from the boxes to paint like wood panels. We slowly created all the different pieces need to recreate the Sunny Side Up Show set. The kids had lots of fun painting all the different pieces that were needed for the contest entry.

Papier-Mache Chica Costume

The Chica Costume (head piece, body, and wings) were created from papier-mache and painted with tempera paints. The Wings were created by laying strips of papier-mache out and letting dry. Once they were dried I cut out the wing shape and painted it. Then I used velcro to stick onto the shirt worn by my daughter. The Beak of the Chica head piece was created using yellow foam and red felt was used to make the comb on top of the head piece.

The Final Contest Entry

We made sure to include all the pieces from the Sunny Side Up Show set so that the contest entry was reflective of the real show. We made Kevin’s desk (made from a box and decorated with pumpkins for Fall), The red barn door (made from box and painted red), the egg clock (made from white paper, painted green and glued on the numbers and clock hands), Chica’s nest (made from a box and covered the outside with moss and brown pipe cleaners), also made sure that we included a funny fruit Hawaiian shirt for the Host to wear (made from white paper, tape the seams and colored in the design with markers). The Background was complete with art work pictures from my kids to hang up behind Chica. The Sunny Side Up show always displayed the viewers artwork for all to see, so we made sure to do this detail too.

This contest was really so much fun, it gave both my kids a boost of confidence when they found out that they won. They were so excited every time they heard it announced on television in between commercials or saw it on the PBS Kids Sprout website. They still talk about this contest to this day, and now they are eager to enter all kinds of creative contest that they hear announced. :o)

I would like to hear what kinds of creative contest have you and your kids have entered? Was it fun for everyone? Would you do it again in the future? Tell us in a short comment below.