This weeks lessons:rainbows & doves & dolly costumes

If you read this blog you know it’s weird that I post this week’s lessons on Monday. I really just needed to go ahead & post them so that I could close the book, so to speak, on old testament legends (for now). We need to clean the slate & start fresh. Today we finished up the Noah/flood story. First we made easy origami doves which we colored. This was a great activity because this was a “folding story”. I retold the story of Noah as we did the folds. Each of the folds symbolized part of the story. I did a separate post on how to make the doves. If you hold their chests and move them up & down the wings & tail will flutter & appear to fly. My daughter just loved this, and made several of them. My daughter wrote the story in her book & did a few illustrations for it. We had a discussion about what it would be like to build such an enormous structure. Through out Noah we sang Shel Silverstein’s poem”Unicorn“. It is kind of silly, but most kids relish silliness. It tells of why the unicorns did not get on the Ark. There are several youtube videos of people doing it as a song if anyone wants to hear it. My dd likes to sing rather than recite, so I accomodate her when fitting.

We sculpted a few animals, and a rainbow from beeswax.

My daughter made her favorite doll “Posey” her Halloween costume. This served as handwork. Posey has been a constant companion since I made her when my daughter was 4. I have repaired holes, re-stitched hair, cleaned repeatedly, and even had to do a complete body replacement. A mean cousin  drew all over her face with a sharpie. That just devastated my daughter, but fortunately the most wonderful dry cleaners in the world at Conway Cleaners cleaned her up for us free of charge. Posey has reached Velveteen Rabbit status. She’s real. So it is only natural that she have her own costume. A is pretty good at working in 3 dimension. She hand sewed the gnome hat from a pattern she made herself. I was suprised to see a 3 panel gnome hat. That was not something I had ever thought of before, but it worked out well. She sewed pink wings onto the doll’s overalls.

So, thats all for now on the old testament legends. The remainder of the week we will work on wigwams made by the Ojibwe. We will hear about the beginning of Turtle Island, a story about a monster called Windigo that eats people & has a heart of ice, and the legend of the dream catcher, all three Ojibwe legends. We will draw, we will sew puckered moccasins, we will make a dream catcher to hang above our beds to capture any bad dreams that arise from all of the weird, scary, modern halloween images she takes in this time of year. Working from the spider theme of the dream catcher we will work on the 8 times table. I think since we are working on 8 in math our form drawing will reflect this too, although I am not sure what forms we will work on. I am thrilled to have a change, and I know my daughter is too.

easy paper folded doves, for Noah story or not

You need a square of paper. Any size or kind will do. You may not want to get above 9 or 10 inches as it would start to get too floppy.

Simple flower silhouettes

Creative Jewish Mom did a nice tutorial on  flower silhouettes. I love these.  They are simple, inexpensive, and beautiful.

Great tutorial: how to make window stars

http://www.duofiberworks.com/journal/2009/1/5/window-star-tutorial.html

Paper star lantern tutorial

I may be late for the party, but I just found a wonderful, and clear tutorial for a folded paper star lantern over at Harmony Valley Homeschool. I woulld love to make a bunch of these out of our left over watercolor paintings. This would make a great project for older kids who are learning fractions and/or geometry.