Clay Bell Ornaments

Making bells out of clay is not as hard as you might think. A simple pinch pot technique is the starting point. I gave my students who were blind a small ball of clay to push their thumb into. By creating a paddle of straight fingers, the thumb and fingers gently press against each other and turned in increments to create even walls and a big enough hollow space for a clapper to move freely. Students rolled a very short coil and attached it to the top of the upside down "pot" and then two holes were poked into the upper part of the bell, and a larger hole at the top of the handle.  Some bells had rubber stamp images pressed into the sides for decoration. Students rolled little balls of clay and poked holes through them for beads, but many of these ended up being too small, or having the hole close up in the drying process.  Remember, clay shrinks, including holes so make everything slightly larger than you want in the end. Plastic beads, jingle bells can be strung on wire and then tied onto the bell through the two holes, but glass beads ended up making the best sound. By spray painting the bells gold and adding some red ribbon, the end product felt much more presentable. Because my students are all blind or low vision, being able to make ornaments that appealed to their sense of hearing made it all the more appreciated. Ring in the season!

 

A Star is Born: Making paper star ornaments.

I find it funny how slowly and painstakingly some remove pretty wrapping paper from a package, I find it funny that some people slowly and painstakingly remove pretty wrapping paper from a gift, only to throw away a few days later. If you have a favorite paper and want to preserve it in a fun way, why not cut it into squares and make ornaments from it during the Christmas break "Lord of the Rings" marathon (or whatever binge watching you do while on break).

They're not hard to make once you learn the steps, which begins with cutting a square of paper, I think I used 7 inches and it worked well. You fold the piece of paper in half, and then take a corner (starting with the folded side) and line the top up with the side, making a little triangle at the top. Unfold and do it with the open side.








After you open that, you'll see you've made a little X.  Take the folded corner at the other end and line it up with the center of the X. Make a crease.

 Grab the corner touching the X center and bring it back so the first edge of fold you made lines up perfectly with the fold you just made, to make a triangle with a little edge.  Then take the half that is still rectangular (with the X) and line the folded edge with your most recent fold so that there is a point in the center of your original rectangle.  At the point (probably facing you, on the original folded edge) crease so that the two triangular shapes are overlapping and the backs are together.Then cut the extra.

 Cut the extra along the edge, and you should open the paper to find a pentagon (5 sides) .
















Take one side of the pentagon and fold it up so that the corners of the edge are just touching the creases that go to the The two points on either side of the center point, just above the center. Repeat that five times so that each edge has been folded and creased.

Then try to fold two sides that are next to each other at the same time, along the pre-folded creases. Where they overlap, there should be a little corner that sticks out the side.
Unfold it and then go around and do this until every corner has had a chance to be creased in this manner.

Grab each point and gently turn them in the same direction until you can press down to create a star shape with the back of the paper spiraling in the center.

Then turn the ornament over, and take the edge of each star point and fold the outer edge half way over so that the point of the pentagon in the center of the star goes to the center of the ornament.

The last corner will need to be tucked into the center, so that it all holds itself together.  It looks pretty nice from either side. I used red ribbon to make a loop and bow. My students helped me make some to send to the board of education for Christmas, but these could be done any time of the year, from sheet music for the refreshment table at a recital, or from gold paper and hanging from the curtain rod for your Oscar's party.  Find a chunk of time to figure it out and then enjoy the process AND the product!

Foam Christmas Ornaments

When my sister asked our mom for advice on how to choose a preschool for her oldest son, Mom said something to this affect: "Go tour the school and look at the artwork hanging in the hall. If every piece looks the same, then you are in the wrong place." I know what she means. Schools are full of well intentioned, but misguided, parent volunteers (and even some teachers) in elementary schools, correcting children for putting the colored foam feathers on their turkey magnet kit in an order different from the manufacturer's photograph. Of course that's fine if you are raising sweat shop workers, but not if you want to encourage creative thinking skills.

This December, rather than buying a foam ornament kit with pre-cut shapes for your children, why not just buy sheets of foam and some glue? Kids have their own ideas. They need to be able to choose their own colors, cut their own shapes, and determine the size, proportion, and patterns that represent their ideas.  Hole punchers not only make the holes in foam to weave or sew ribbon or yarn, but the colored circles can be used as ornaments or lights on a foam tree, or Santa eyes or snow man buttons.

Craft foam is in expensive enough that if one idea is a flop, trying a second and third time is not a big deal. These ornaments were made by some of my elementary students this week and I'd like to think that if a mother were coming to check out our school, that she would notice the variety in every piece of my students' work, whether in the hallway or on the Christmas tree.