Mark is 15! How did that happen??

 What a wonderful young man Mark has become.

 The singing of the song....

 He is a wonderful young man but also a total goof!

 Some serious building is going to be going on around here. 

(That Gyrobot thing....it can walk on a string strung across the living room...totally cool)

 You CAN give the gift of underwear to certain people.

Busily building.

Fun, Fun, Funprint..Fingerprints

 We found the most fun art book from the library this past week.

Ed Emberley's Complete Funprint Drawing Book.

 

 We discovered the best way to make fingerprints was to use slightly wet watercolor paint.

Whatever you do, DON'T use something like these pigment inks we had. 

They never, ever wash off hands, (or towels, or clothes)---BIG mistake!

 Simply make fingerprints onto heavy (I use 24 pound) printer paper.

Next you decorate with a black sharpie thin marker.

 You can see the difference between a regular sharpie and a thin sharpie....the character on the far right was made with a regular sharpie.  (Kimberly wrote "iH" and then was quite embarrassed when she saw her mistake...so cute!_

Gracie's completed folks.  This was a lot of fun.

Stained Glass Art

 We have been studying the Middle Ages and yesterday we learned about the importance of stained glass windows.  The windows didn't just present the most beautiful artwork most people would ever see, but they were used to tell the stories of the church with pictures of bible stories and saints for the illiterate. (Which was the great majority of people during this time period.)

We started by finding a picture we liked in a coloring book.  

Next, we covered the back of the picture with a thick layer of pencil.

 Tape the picture onto watercolor paper with easily removable tape.

Trace the image onto the water color paper.

 Luke's shark

 Next, we took regular Elmer's white glue, emptied 1/4 of the glue into another bottle and then added black tempera paint.....shake well. (It took a lot of shaking to get the black paint mixed into the glue).

Trace over the picture with black glue.

 Luke's shark outlined with glue. It took several hours for the glue to dry.

 Kim chose a monkey.

 We then added straight glue lines, freehand, to the paper around the main image. 

 Using watercolors, fill in the spaces...we used bright colors for the border.  The black glue is a barrier between colors. 

 These came out so awesome!! The kids were able to make them all on their own.  

Here you can see the raised glue....This was a fun project which we will definitely make again.  

I'm thinking a heart in the center with warm colors in the heart and cool colors for the border.

Happy Christmas, from all 11 Collins' kids

Merry Christmas!!

From our house to yours!!

A Cobweb Christmas

We love our Catholic Mosaic book written by Cay Gibson. Amazon tells us, "A set of study guides for parents and teachers who wish to share Christmas-themed picture books with their children. 30 children's books are featured with discussion questions, vocabulary, and enrichment activities. Includes an extensive list of over 200 Christmas picture book titles, crafts, poems, and recipes."

We have been enjoying the books recommended in this book for many years.

And I always seem to have a new group of littles to enjoy the books and activities with.

The books we enjoyed over the last few days were: The Cobweb Curtain

The Christmas Cobwebs and

Cobweb Christmas:The Tradition of Tinsel.

All the stories incorporated the ideas of the goodness of spiders and how they helped the baby Jesus or helped those who helped celebrade Jesus' childhood.

 I  found a great printout for a spider snowflake.

We very carefully cut out our spiders and when we unfolded them we were so happy to find beautiful paper spiderwebs, 

It take a lot of finger muscles to cut out the paper which was folder many times.



Success!!

We glued our finished spiders onto black constructions paper. We then used out finger to spread on glitter glue.  

We found a great print  of our spider that we made into Christmas snowflake.

Some to the spiders and a couple of the wonderful  books

Now, I am one to catch the spider and put it outside to "be with it's family" 

I was so happy to find the simple craft to make a spider suitable to every Christmas tree.The simple dirctions for making a jingle bell spider craft can be found here..they are very cute. 

I'm getting up there....

 My family prepared a wonderful celebration for my birthday....

complete with enough candle to warn the family!

Homemade Orange Pomander

 We haven't made orange pomanders in a few years...and I just love the Christmassy  smell these give off-it's one of my favorite smells. 

Start with a good sized navel orange and whole cloves.  Hopefully you can find a nice Amish store to pick up the cloves, because if not this is a VERY expensive craft.  At Walmart I priced the whole cloves at almost $12.00 a jar. 

 Stick the cloves into the orange.  We like to use a toothpick to  make a little whole in the orange skin and then the clove slides in nice and easy.

 The kids took a couple days of completing their oranges...it's kind of boring work after a little while, so it is a great thing to do while watching a a Christmas movie.

 Once completed..(or as completed as the kids can manage) wrap the orange with pretty netting.  I found this red netting at Hobby Lobby.  It has nice large openings to let the yummy smell through.

I then tied a ribbon tightly around the ribbon. 

At the same time I was putting the ribbon around the netting I strung a piece of ribbon for hanging the pomander.

Picture perfect!

I then hung the oranges in our front windows.  It's gorgeous in our window in front of our many paper snowflakes. 

Merry Christmas everyone!

Time is running out to order your hats and mittens before Christmas

 There's still 2 weeks to get your orders in to be ready for Christmas.

We have earflap hats with or without braids and with or without a pom pom.  

Adult sized hats are $20.00 

Kids hats $15.00

 Baby hat $15.00

 Tiny knitted  stocking ornaments $5.00 a pair....I'll do my best to get what ever color you are interested in. 

 Adult hats:$20.00

adult mittens: $10.00

kids mittens: $7.50