This is not for this Sunday but I wanted to share the preparations I am making for a Singing Time activity / present toward the end of December.
In 2010, I stumbled across a great blog post about making "Happy Girls." The blogger used green for the felt dress, which reminded me of the green "Choose the Right," theme. The image above is from her blog. Two years later, I am a primary chorister, and the theme for the year in primary is "Choose the Right," so I couldn't resist making these little people as an end-of-the-year Christmas present and activity.
Of course, since I have a lot of boys in the class, mine are "Choose the Right Children," and the felt children are simply wearing clothes, not a dress.
These are super easy to make. I bought all the supplies I needed at Wal-Mart for about $15 (green felt, wood beads, hemp string, glue). Everything was in the same aisle. I really try to support the smaller businesses, like the craft shops, but I was in a hurry that day, and I pass Wal-Mart on my regular travel route. Sigh. You need to go to her blog for instructions on how to make this, and then you can see what I did with the activity below. The one thing I would change from her instructions, though is that I tried double-sided sticky tape and did not feel it was super sturdy. Also, it seemed a bit more expensive to me to go the tape route. I then tried Elmer's glue and fabric glue, and found the felt didn't stick together well with either of these because they tended to absorb the glue and then thicken the felt rather than sticking the felt together. I switched to hot glue, and it worked great! I did all of this with one stick of hot glue - about 15 cents worth of glue, I think.
Since I bought my wood beads in a variety pack, I had an assortment of different types of heads.
I will give each child a "happy child" (this is a gift for them to keep) to remind them to remember the theme for the year and always to choose the right. I will then proceed to use the Happy Children as part of an activity. Since my Happy Children each have one of several varieties of head shapes and colors, I can do fun things like tell the children with pieces that have a square head to make a certain motion, or tell the children with dark brown vs. light brown heads to sing another way, for example. I will figure that part out later but wanted to share the idea with you now, in case you want to take the time to create these.
In 2010, I stumbled across a great blog post about making "Happy Girls." The blogger used green for the felt dress, which reminded me of the green "Choose the Right," theme. The image above is from her blog. Two years later, I am a primary chorister, and the theme for the year in primary is "Choose the Right," so I couldn't resist making these little people as an end-of-the-year Christmas present and activity.
Of course, since I have a lot of boys in the class, mine are "Choose the Right Children," and the felt children are simply wearing clothes, not a dress.
These are super easy to make. I bought all the supplies I needed at Wal-Mart for about $15 (green felt, wood beads, hemp string, glue). Everything was in the same aisle. I really try to support the smaller businesses, like the craft shops, but I was in a hurry that day, and I pass Wal-Mart on my regular travel route. Sigh. You need to go to her blog for instructions on how to make this, and then you can see what I did with the activity below. The one thing I would change from her instructions, though is that I tried double-sided sticky tape and did not feel it was super sturdy. Also, it seemed a bit more expensive to me to go the tape route. I then tried Elmer's glue and fabric glue, and found the felt didn't stick together well with either of these because they tended to absorb the glue and then thicken the felt rather than sticking the felt together. I switched to hot glue, and it worked great! I did all of this with one stick of hot glue - about 15 cents worth of glue, I think.
Since I bought my wood beads in a variety pack, I had an assortment of different types of heads.
I will give each child a "happy child" (this is a gift for them to keep) to remind them to remember the theme for the year and always to choose the right. I will then proceed to use the Happy Children as part of an activity. Since my Happy Children each have one of several varieties of head shapes and colors, I can do fun things like tell the children with pieces that have a square head to make a certain motion, or tell the children with dark brown vs. light brown heads to sing another way, for example. I will figure that part out later but wanted to share the idea with you now, in case you want to take the time to create these.
Wow, those look so cute! I can't believe you made those for all the kids!
ReplyDeleteThanks! I hope the kids like them. I made the legs in big batches, then attached the heads in a batch, rather than making the entire felt child one by one, so the project went fairly quickly.
ReplyDeleteThese are super cute! Thanks so much for sharing! How did you make the clothes?? A dress looks easy, but clothes...not so much.
ReplyDeleteThanks Stacey! Sorry for the confusion - I didn't make different clothes, it's just all about marketing. I see how that could come across in a confusing manner. I don't want to call them "dolls" or the boys won't them. So, I am just saying that when I give these out, I am not going to call them "dolls" or "dresses" but just happy children choosing the right.
ReplyDelete