Homemade Moravian Star

As a native of Pennsylvania Dutch country, I grew up seeing Moravian Stars shaped lights hanging from porch stoop roofs and I have never stopped loving them. The Moravians were a Christian religious church that is about 500 years old and began in the the Czech Republic. The famous star, was said to have been born out of a geometry lesson at a Moravian boy's school in Germany in 1830. The Moravians settled places like Bethlehem and Nazareth, PA, and brought with them, their stars. They have become associated with the the Christmas season (Star of Bethlehem), but a lot of people hang these stars year round. I'm not sure if original star probably had 20 points or 26 but I was thrilled to find a template to make my own star from paper on lovelyetc.com

This tree topper actually has 19 points because there is a hole where the final point is missing, and that's the place where you can slide it onto the top of a tree. Each point is a pyramid of 3 triangles, each with a 2.5" base and 3.5" sides. There are 2 flaps on the bottom and one on the side. I used card stock of various colors and some patterned paper to cover most of the pyramids (before assembling). A strip of hot glue is all it takes to make each pyramid. 

You start with 5 pieces each attached on 2 sides to make a 5 pointed star. Each pyramid base will be attached at two sides.

The second layer will require a pyramid to be added at each of the remaining sides of the original star. Because each of those pyramids will have two remaining sides, there are a total of places to attach the next 5 pyramids. The 3rd layer will zig zag. You'll glue two sides of a new pyramid between each of the 2nd layer. The 4th and final grouping will fill in the final 5 pyramids at the bottom like the star of 5 at the top. Unless, like me, you'll need to leave a hole to make it a tree topper, in which case, you only add 4 pyramids. This picture, of my second star (this time I used glittery gold card stock) shows what it will look like after adding the 3rd group of 5 pyramids. You will have 5 tabs (or places to put a tab from another pyramid) at the opening.

I made more than one mistake my first try so I had to keep reminding myself to have pyramids coming together to make a star in every direction. Just play around and don't lose your temper, it will all work out. I cut a few little rectangles to make a tab on each side for the places where I had to cut them apart to add an extra pyramid here and there. 

I wasn't crazy about the little gaps that were left at the intersections, so I hot glued little beads to fill the holes. and I think the stars turned out really cute. I can't wait to see perched on a tree,  or a mantle.

For detailed instructions AND free template use this link below. Thank you, Carrie at Lovely etc.

https://www.lovelyetc.com/diy-christmas-tree-star/

Vision of Christmas Tree for the Visually Impaired

The Museum of Art and Science has an annual Festival of Trees exhibit. This year, my students and I participated as a way to advocate and inform the public about what it means to be blind. I spent a couple weeks teaching my students how to make ornaments that do that. We cut pages of a Brailled magazine into 3/4" X 22" strips to fold into Moravian Stars and we cut and painted wooden dowels to make white cane ornaments. The black handle and the red bottom was made with colored tape, and the tips were made with beads. Red was added to white canes so that they could be seen in the snow. There are a lot of different tips of cane tips to be chosen according to the needs of the user. There's a pencil tip, which most of my students avoid since they get caught in side walk cracks; there's a marshmallow roller (a cylinder wider than the pencil tip, which is about the same size, shape, and color of a marshmallow), a ball tip, which is very common, and a disc shape jumbo roller.

For students who couldn't handle the complicated instructions of the Moravian star, I taught them create curls of Braille by rolling it around dowels and pencils.  Some of these, like the stars were dusted with gold spray paint.




Left over Brailed paper from the magazine was cut into quarter or half inch strips to create quilled ornaments. These ornaments make tactile images of hearts, flowers, angels, birds, snowflakes and snowmen, once glued to cut up plastic covers to Braille books.  There were also Braille beads that students strung to make words like "Joy" and "Peace," but we ran out of the letter beads we needed after a handful of ornaments.  For the tree topper, I made a large Moravian Star using poster board cut lengthwise in 2" wide strips. Two strips were glued together and folded in half.

  I took twelve high school students the the museum to decorate our assigned tree for the display. We titled it "Vision of Christmas" and if you look close enough you'll find some stress balls that look like eye balls peering out from boughs. We're not afraid of whimsy and it matched our theme.



While we were at the museum we checked out the art exhibits, the mini zoo, the artists workshop and science center for lots of hands on fun.  After a picnic lunch we made it back to the school for the second half the day, with our hearts full of early Christmas cheer.