Harvest Festival

This evening was harvest festival at our village church. I always enjoy evening services more than daytime, I think it's the atmosphere. It's the same when they hold the carol service, but then what's not to love about anything festive and Christmas feeling? (and we all chat with mince pies and mulled wine afterwards!) Unfortunately, I couldn't go because I have this awful EMA (end of module assessment) to write for my linguistics course on 'attitudes and values to English language'. Yay.

The Sunday school children were asked to create an animal/creature/person out of vegetables for their display. It's a similar idea to what the Small Person did for her school fair, back before the summer holiday, when she created a likeness of the Queen, for the Jubilee. This time it's a bunny. I pushed (hammered in some places!) sticks in for her, and she positioned her bits and pieces.

What do you think? Is it a vegetable masterpiece? The body is a squash, The ears are baby corn, the cheeks are button mushrooms, the nose and eyes are raisins,

the feet are made of a halved shallot (which I chopped for her),

the arms are satsuma segments, and his tail is a flower of broccoli.

The whole thing is put together with cocktail sticks (Did you know it's really tough to push cocktail sticks into squash without them snapping?!) and he's holding a baby carrot in case he gets hungry.

Because of the shape of the squash, he has a lovely little sideways tilt, almost like he's tilting his head on to the side to look at you. I think it gives him character. My nan thinks it makes him look like he's had one too many! :D

The Small Person was given a chocolate bar for her efforts, so was very pleased. Less pleased was Mr Bogert who said that both of the Small People had not been on their best behaviour. So she hasn't been allowed to eat her chocolate bar.

Absent from the service was the Sunday school teacher, Jeanne, who is unwell and in hospital. We're really wishing her a speedy recovery. The Small Person made her a card which one of our neighbours is going to pass along.

Toddler Group Tuesday - Tube Owls

I remember making a version of this owl when I was just a Small Person, and I've seen a few other variations floating around the web. Here's our version we made with the toddlers at today's session.

 

To make your own tube owl you will need:

- a cardboard tube (we have used cut down kitchen roll middles)
- glue
- white paper or card
- at least 2 different shades of brown paper or card (you could even use fabric, felt or other flexible materials)
- orange craft foam (you could also use paper/card/felt)
- some yellow craft foam (again, paper card or felt would also work)
- a black felt tip pen or marker

First of all you need to make your owl shape. To do this you fold one half of the top down and ease into the curve shape you see here, then you fold the second top half over the top. This is similar to a pillow box opening. We did this for the children so that they were ready to go (don't forget we're working in a short time span with children aged 0-5).

Next we glued a strip of brown paper over the bottom half of the tube (opposite end to the shaped fold). This seperates the body and the head into two different colours.

Back view with paper strip and 'feathers' on show.

We cut feather shapes with flat ends (you can see clearly in the photograph) from the different brown papers. We glued them at different levels all over the body section.

We cut two curved edged pieces (similar to the feather pieces, but rounder and smaller) from the yellow craft foam and glued them to the underside of the bottom of the owl. These are the owls feet.

Next we cut two circles from the white card/paper, roughly around the size of a 10p. We used the black marker to make a big round pupil in the centre of each circle to form the big eyes. We glued these in place close to the top of the head section.

We cut a small triangle from orange craft foam and glue this in place under the eyes to form the beak.

All finished!

We could have attached string or ribbon at the point where we were creating the folds at the beginning, and then you would be able to hang them up. Mr Bogert has already requested that we make some for the christmas tree this year, so I'll be sure to post a Christmas version closer to the festive season.

You could create different variations with different colour papers. If you have time, look up some different varieties of owl and look at the colours of their feathers. A snowy owl for example could be made with different shades of white paper, and mabe even some feathers cut from old printed letters. You could even add a dusting of glitter for a bit of snow or frost. Winter isn't that far away.

A couple of suggestions for halloween craft along similar lines and using the same folded tube shape: to create a vampire bat, use black papers, cut bat shaped wings and glue to the back. You could use googly eyes or the same eyes as the owl, and instead of a triangle for an orange beak, cut two white triangles for fangs! Alternatively, use all red, orange and yellows. Use yellow for the eyes, and white triangles for fangs. Cut the same bat shaped wings, but from red or orange and glue them to the back of your tube. Use foam or card to cut a long spear headed tail shape, and finish with a sprinkling of gold or red glitter - you've just created a fire imp!

Happy crafting :)