Making Christmas Cards

Niamh starting her Christmas cards.
Painting a pattern for the camels.
Ciara wanted to join in too.
Eden putting some finishing touches on.
The finished card.
We chose a text from Old and New Testament this year, and it ties in nicely with the design.

Busy hands

Niamh is really chuffed to be making her sister's Christmas present this year, she is trying her hardest to keep it a surprise from her sister.
The whole family has gone paper aeroplane making mad, and Ciara has been watching everyone make them, and came up with her own version all by herself, she even decorated it.
Ciara was so chuffed that she got to make a Mr Men Birthday card for her friend (the party was a Mr Men party).
She is learning how to form the letters correctly now, still following dotted lines, but moving her pen in the right directions.

Glue Resist Watercolour

First sketch your picture

Then go over the outlines with glue.

Then paint over with watercolour. The glue will resist the paint.
Eden's painting of Abraham looking up at the stars.
Niamh's painting.
Jude and Ciara wanted to do a wax resist watercolour instead.

Some stained glass techniques

We have been doing our Jesse tree readings leading up to Christmas. Yesterday Jude made a stained glass effect earth for our reading on creation, and today they all got stuck into making a stained glass snake for our reading on the fall.

Stained Glass effect Snake.
First add black acrylic paint to pva glue and give it a good mix until everything turns black.
Outline a picture of a snake (use watercolour paper, or thick paper).
Leave the outline to dry.
Paint in with watercolour paints, it turned out so well that everyone wanted to do one.
Jude coloured in this earth and then dipped cottonwool in oil and covered the picture with it.

We then put it on the window to let the light shine in.
I was so pleased that Ciara wrote this so well, she must be quite familiar with the shapes of the letters in her mind to be able to copy my dots so closely.

Viking Longship

The children have loved putting this together in stages and seeing how it all comes together. It is not quite finished as they have to put oars on, and finish the deck.

A nice reward

Eden finished her final test for her Delta maths course today. She has a fantastic grasp of multiplication and division now, and can do more complicated long division than I ever needed to do by hand. She can also write and read Roman Numerals far more proficiently than I ever have, more fun than useful, and she can work out areas on a few different geometrical shapes. She knew I was going to give her a special gift for finishing this, and did 6 pages in one day yesterday, but I insisted she finish the test today, before she got her reward, and I am glad she did, it was a great confidence booster to her to see she got a distinction in the test.The reward is something she has been asking for for a long time, a quill and ink set.
She tested it out straight away, and will now be able to learn some calligraphy.

Gladys Aylward

Eden writes:

Gladys Aylward was a missionary who went to China to teach people there about Jesus. Soon after she arrived Japanese soldiers came to China and dropped bombs on their city. China was at war. Gladys adopted orphan children, her first was a little girl called Ninepence because she bought her for all the money in her pocket which was nine pence. Soon she was looking after many war orphans. One day the Japanese discovered that Gladys had been a spy for the Chinese, and was against them. They offered a large sum of money if someone could hand her over, but Gladys had escaped into the mountains before anyone could hand her over. Gladys miraculously managed to get all her war orphans across the Yellow River and to safety.

Niamh writes:
Gladys Aylward was a missionary who went to China. She was going to work with Mrs Lawson, after many weeks she found her in Yang Cheng, a beautiful Chinese village that looked like Cinderella's palace. After Mrs Lawson died, Gladys was asked to go from village to village inspecting every little girls feet making sure they were not bound, and telling Bible Stories as she went. Soon a lot of people became Christians. Very soon everyone was calling her Ai-weh-deh which means virtuous one. Gladys had also five adopted children of her own and 394 war orphans that she was looking after. The Japanese were fighting the Chinese and Gladys had to take all of the kids to the caves in the mountains to hide. They went back to Yang Cheng when the Japanese had moved out of the village..... but the Japanese came back and Gladys had to take 94 of the children across the Yellow River. After travelling across big mountains they got to the river safely. They had to pray for a boat to come so they could cross the river. God answered their prayer, a boat came and they could cross the river. Gladys and the children arrived at Sian safely.