DIY Angel Gabriel

One of my favorite things about teaching Faith Formation, besides sharing my faith with the kids obviously, is coming up with fun and informative lessons. Sometimes it can be a real challenge to find things that aren't too babyish or labor intensive—I've been overwhelmed by Pinterest more often than not. BUT, as with the Thankful Turkeys we did before Thanksgiving, I came up with these simple Angel Gabriels and it worked really well for our class of 26 six and seven year-olds.

We made these after our first Advent lesson, when I felt like the kids had a good grasp of not only whom Gabriel was but also why he is so important to us. I love this craft because it is super easy and super cheap to create in bulk. A lot of times I find awesome crafts on Pinterest, but they require seven different specialty products and when you're trying to create 26 of them it gets expensive. The only downside to this craft is the toilet paper rolls that make the body. Usually I send out an email to parents and have everyone bring one in. Otherwise, everything else needed is basic. Relatively quick too!

Supplies
Toilet paper roll
White and yellow construction paper
Basket style coffee filter
Scissors
Glue stick
Stapler
Writing instrument

Directions
Take your white construction paper and fold it into thirds, ripping at the folds. This will serve as the covering for the toilet paper roll body. Wrap the white paper over the roll and glue in place. Using your writing instrument (some kids used crayons, some used pencils, I used a pen) make sure your Angel Gabriel has a face!! For the wings, take a flattened basket coffee filter and fold it in half. Using a stapler, attach the coffee filter to the prepared body to create wings. Make small cuts along the ridges of the filter to give your wings some depth! Taking the yellow paper cut a small circle for the halo, gluing it to one side.

Thankful Turkey Craft

This year in Faith Formation has been a challenge to say the least. Maybe it's all the full moons? Anyway, it seems like this class has forced me to look outside of the box more than ever before. One of the many reasons I love teaching first grade is that they are just old enough to sit through a lesson, but still love to do crafts!

The Sunday before Thanksgiving week is always hard. This year, most of the schools are out for the entire week, so we won't have a lot of kids that attend class. The ones that do have, for the most part, already checked out of learning. I felt daunted trying to come up with something for an hour and forty-five minutes! Then inspiration struck: I love these little turkeys, I think they turned out precious.

 They are so INCREDIBLY easy. Now how I got the large amount (and array) of paint samples from Walmart wasn't so easy, but as my momma always said, "Where there's a will, there is a way." I wasn't techincally doing anything wrong, but it felt like I was? Anyway, I "overgrabbed" what we ended up needing so at least I don't have to feel awkward again next year?

All you need for this craft is construction paper, a writing instrument, three paint samples, scisorrs and glue.

Cut a piece of brown construction paper in the shape of a circle; we used a roll of masking tape as our circle pattern. Cut four smaller circles out of white and blue or green construction paper for the eyes, for layering the eye color on top of the white; orange construction paper in the shape of a triangle works for the beak. Glue the eyes and the beak to your circle; all you have to draw is the mouth and you've got the turkey body!

My favorite part of this craft is the feathers. For our Faith Formation class we used a white board to list all the things we could think of that we were thankful for like the Holy Spirit, St. John the Baptist, Pope Francis, our families, schools and the military. From the list each child was responsibile for copying down one item to each of their three feathers. We used pencil and they were hard to photograph, for the example I used a Sharpie and it worked much better. But I wasn't about to pass out 26 sharpies, so the pencils worked just fine. In real life you can see them fine. Crayon does NOT work on the paint samples however.

To make the feathers, simply cut a rounded edge triangle from the paint strips. Most of the kids didn't do so hot at the rounded edge, but I think the sharp corners look just as cute! Once you have your feather shape, copy your thankful item to the top, then glue the feathers paint side forward to the turkey body.

Voila! You have a super sweet, super easy Thankful Turkey. My personal favorite is little Clara who wrote "St. Therese; Toys; Candy". 

#posiweek

Today is just one of those days.

I sit in my cubical and think of the ever-growing to-do list. Nothing seems to go right, and everything seems to be falling into place.

As a writer sometimes inspiration comes. Sometimes I stare at the wall. The last little while has been seemingly never ending. I blinked and it was October. Granted, I was out of town on a story-gathering trip for seven days. But still was it not just the 4^th of July? Story-gathering trips are always so fun for me, but they usually knock me down a bit. This past jaunt was no different. I covered over 2,200 miles. Four states. Seven different companies. Loggers, timber processers and foresters, oh my!

I’m so lucky to have the opportunity to meet with guys (and their lady counterparts) at the end of dirt roads that are really making a difference in our world. Don’t get what I mean? Don’t support the logging industry?

TRY WIPING IT WITH A PINECONE THEN.

But I digress. Some big things are happening around little 1213, and I am excited for what’s in store. Things aren’t firm yet, but I will more than likely be going back to school in Fall 2013. I couldn’t have found a more perfect program for me and cannot wait to bury my nose in a textbook again. Could I be anymore of a dork? Probably, but oh well. I love certain elements of school and cannot wait to get back into an English classroom. Master’s of Liberal Arts program, lookout!

This past story-gathering trip lead me to some awesome places, which really means lots of awesome treasures were loaded into the back of a Ford hatchback and made their way from Mississippi/Arkansas/Louisiana/Tennessee to Montgomery. I have so many ideas for the things I found. I keep telling myself I am going to post all my projects up here, and then never seem to find the time. Well, next week will be the time. It’s therapeutic for me to do my little crafts and what better platform to showcase them?

It’s also about time I bought myself a chest of drawers/bedroom dresser. But that’s being held off another month because I desperately need to chunk some money into the new computer fund. Plus the holidays are coming up. But again, I digress.

One of my absolute favorite people in the entire world is Brian Oliu. Writer, comedian, all around stand up man. Oh and did I mention my saving grace this last year? (…and probably years to come) He has started a social media campaign called #posiweek. Each day he has postings designed to uplift the spirit, make you smile, and just all around warm your heart. Which, honestly, who doesn’t need that every now and again?

Seeing these posts made me want to be positive about myselflifethings. Difficult, given that for the first four days of this week I’ve battled a terrible head cold. But each time I saw one of the #posiweek tweets/statuses I saw myself smile. I sure hope that the #posiweek stays with me into tonight, as we all watch or in my case don’t watch the VP debate, and into the weekend, where I welcome to Montgomery one of my best friends from college. It’s a good week y’all, it’s #posiweek.