The holiday spirit arrived at Wrightsville Beach School early, where students worked for more than a month to create a holiday window display for Lauren & Elizabeth at Mayfaire Town Center.
Art teacher Jennifer Crafts picked a theme of Mermaid’s First Snow to provide a fresh perspective on the magic of Christmas and the school’s beach culture, incorporating soft, dreamy blues and greens with glittery accents.
“The idea is that it’s magically snowing under the water,” Crafts said. “I wanted to do something underwater, since we are a beach school, but I wanted to move away from the typical things we do. Mermaids seemed like a magical thing for Christmas.”
Kelsey Elmore’s fourth grade class hummed with excitement as students strung blue and white beads on pipe cleaners to create snowflakes during art class on Nov. 21. Every grade helped by painting paper bubbles and sea foam or cutting out fish to swim behind the mermaid in the window display. Fifth grader Emily Beckman drew the mermaid, while second grade students created colorful, glittery scales for the mermaid’s tail.
“Everyone has their own little bits and pieces of what they’ve done. It’s a group effort,” Crafts said.
Fourth grader Christopher Agrella said he thinks the mermaid is a little girly, but he likes the underwater theme and is excited to help decorate.
“You can’t just have something looking plain. That looks bad,” Agrella said.
Fourth grader Morgan Hawthorne said she loves holiday decorating, especially when it’s a creative outlet during school.
“It’s fun to create stuff and go wild. Ms. Crafts doesn’t make us be quiet,” Hawthorne said.
Wrightsville Beach School is one of 17 schools creating decorations for store windows at Mayfaire. Director of marketing Paige Somervell said the window art showcase is new to Mayfaire’s holiday offerings and was developed as a way to invite families to create a new holiday tradition by grabbing a hot chocolate and walking around the shopping center to see the displays. Somervell also said it provided an opportunity for local teachers to coordinate themes for the window displays with lesson plans.
Roland-Grise Middle School Art Teacher Jen Capps worked with students to create a Christmas tree window display at Gap with donated clothing, jewelry and belts to tie in with a program of study on textiles and fabrics. Murray Middle School art teacher Pamela Brodbeck also used donated fabrics with tree limbs to accompany a lesson plan on recycling and reusing for a display at Palm Garden.
The window decorations will be officially unveiled following a Nov. 28 tree lighting ceremony at 6:30 p.m. in front of Mayfaire 16 Cinemas. The decorations will remain on display through Dec. 31.
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