A Kid Craft Weekend

The kids have been using their talents this weekend. In a fit of boredom, their creativity leaked out!
Nathan always draws excellent birds and recently perfected his German Shepherd. The thing that amazes me is that he does these drawings out of his mind. I have to copy a picture when I draw.
Elijah has been receiving the kid's magazine "Ranger Rick" since Christmas. This is a great magazine all about wildlife. Inside this month's issue was this idea for making an owl to keep birds from whacking into your window. The owl is meant to be hung outside. We won't do that since the window that birds hit into is also the window where the bird food is.

A few months back, I read Mandy by Julie Edwards, to the kids. May really enjoyed this book, which is a little like The Secret Garden. She began reading it herself this last week and today did a watercolor to depict the little house in the woods that Mandy finds, complete with flagstone walk and flower beds.

Elijah did a watercolor of a Christmas tree.

May has been practicing her crochet and talks about that here on her blog. She amazed herself as her ball of yarn disappeared today during Sacrament meeting. She graduated from single crochets to double crochets recently!


We held American Girl Club this past Saturday and we were talking about World War II. It was particularly fitting to 2008 as well since our country is at war. We read a story about a little girl whose family was spared from the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, Japan. However several years later, she was diagnosed with leukemia from her exposure to radiation. There is a Japanese legend that cranes live for 1000 years. The little girl believed this legend and believed that if she folded 1000 cranes, perhaps her life would be spared. She died after folding 655 (I might be off a little there) cranes. Children from her village folded the rest of the cranes and brought them to the funeral. To this day, children who love peace fold origami cranes and send them to a monument around this little girl's burial site. At American Girl Club, we learned to fold origami cranes and though we aren't sending them to Japan, we talked about why we were folding them. You can learn to fold your own crane here.


After we had folded a whole flock of cranes, Nathan broke out his book Super Simple Paper Airplanes and folded a few of those.

Last year Elijah received a desk calendar of paper airplanes. Tomorrow's paper tells you how to fold today's paper into an airplane. Some of those seem to be expert designs, but we've got a pile full of planes that those boys have worked hard to fold.


On a final creative note, Nathan decorated this cake for our friend Gabe whose birthday is coming up this week. This was Nathan's first decorating job and I think he did just great!


Sariah wanted to make sure I posted her painting. The pink dots are clouds, she told me.