A Net in Time

Curriculum and book reviews, faith, homeschooling and more!

Crafts

Eight Tutorials For Making Dolls

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So I’m thinking of teaching other doll making class since the last class was oh so fun.  Here are some ideas that I am collecting.

Doll Making Tutorials

Sock Dolls

Octopus doll

Found this decent page on making a corn husk doll.
Check it out here.
That of course inspired me to look it up on youtube. 🙂

Sock and felt Doll

Clothespin doll

Paper craft Red and White Doll

Papercraft doll with skirt

Pioneer Rag Doll

Another version of a ragdoll. Hard to know which is the better option eh?

But I think that’s given me some good ideas for another class eh? What do you think?
Do you have any dolls that might be easy for children to make? Leave me a comment or link eh?

 

While I’m thinking of it.  Did you know this?  Pretty good deal eh?   $1 for the first month and $14.95/month thereafter?  Worth checking it out at least eh?   Learn more here.

Art with Dolls

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Do you remember I did a class on making dolls?  We had a lot of fun though admittedly we did the class differently than I had planned.

clothes pin doll, doll making class

You see my kids wanted to learn how to sew.  This wasn’t on my agenda at all.  I remember teaching my son to sew and thought two kids, sewing.. NOT.  But they really, really  (to the extent of begging) wanted to learn so I bite the bullet. 

making stuffies as we learn to sew in Doll Making ClassI have to admit, the hardest part was trying to make sure Dad wasn’t helping their lad too much.  “Let him do it himself I kept instructing!”.   The children had fun learning to make a simple block stuffy, giving them their own personalities and colour. 

The final day I gave them three different options for what to make.  Paper dolls, Topsy-turvy dolls or Clothespin dolls. 

Know what they both chose?  Topsy Turvy dolls!   What fun!   And easy enough to make.  Take a sock (like you are going to make a snow man doll) but instead you make a face on both sides and give the doll a cape to you can show which side is up. 

Topsy turvy dolls in doll making class

I loved how the children made these dolls their own.  🙂

Let’s see what else did we make.  OH.. the wooden stick dolls.  Which well.. we didn’t use wooden sticks from trees (like we were supposed to) I had long white things (surgical supply I think) and dowels, it was great letting the children decide which they wanted to use, and we had fun being creative!   One child decided he wanted to make a cat!  The other did a doll with a striped dress.   My son did “Dr. Who”. 

wooden stick dolls in doll making class

We also made a doll that could move on strings. But I will have to show you that another day as it’s getting late and I’m rather tired.  🙂

My goal is to teach this class (or another like it) to a different group of children.  I am hopeful to do that this summer.   Would be fun to teach it again…it was a great class to do. 

Art Book: Doll Crafts

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Today I have a fun book that has me wanting to build dolls or teach a class about making dolls.   I can’t say that teaching a bunch of girls is way high on my list of things to do… but this book has my inspired to perhaps break out of my comfort zone.  The book “Doll Crafts” by Laurie Carlson. 

Why does this book inspire such confidence in me, an ungirlie girl, who doesn’t like to sew or do dolly type stuff?  The variety of dolls to make.   And the detail they put into describing how to put them together.

And then there’s the patterns and the variety in accessories that even “I” should be able to make.   Clothes and puppies and patterns, houses and glasses and even hair!   It’s a cornucopia of ideas.

Not only that, the table of contents makes it very easy to find what you are looking for.  Two pages, divided into the following sections.   

  • Welcome to the Workshop: doll markers toolbox
  • The Adventure Begins: Dolls (this section is further divided into 15 subsections)
  • Dress them up: Doll Clothes and Accessories
  • Home Sweet Home: Dollhouses

I think about this book, and then consider some of the Popsicle crafts I’ve been seeing on Pinterest lately and I think wouldn’t that make a fun class to teach?

You need to check out some of the details on each page.

My Thoughts: 

Laurie Carlson has done a stellar job of putting together this doll craft book for children.  Clear instructions, lots of patterns, complete materials lists, history of the doll being made, and child friendly language.   Makes it a worthwhile book to get for your creative youngsters, or their parents who want the fun of making dolls for their children.   Can’t you just see your girls (or yourself) enjoying this book?  

Doll Crafts: A kid's guide to making simple dolls,
   clothing, accessories, and houses. 
Laurie Carlson
Chicago Review Press
Crafts, dolls, do it yourself, youth
trade paperback, 138 pages

Reviewed for Chicago Review Press.
  
Where can you find it?:  Amazon Link.

Review: The Benevolent Bee

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You know what?  I happen to like bees.  I admittedly wasn’t fond of them as a child when one stun me on the eye (landed on my face so I grabbed at it)  BIG mistake.  So it took me a while to get back that, but once I realized how neat they were, I developed a fondness for them.  Stephanie Bruneau brings us the Benevolent Bee, a  book crafted to show us the bee and how she works, AND how we can benefit from all she provides.   

I have to admit, this is a rather neat book.  It talks briefly about the lifecycle and work of the honeybee, but devotes itself to the benefits of honeybees.

Ms Bruneau first teaches the science behind each of the benefits of the honeybee.  She works her way through propolis, pollen, honey, royal jelly, venom and beeswax.   Did you know that in it’s final state honey can last forever without spoiling? 

She follows this up with recipes, crafts or projects one can do.  You can learn to make elderberry syrup, honey fire tonic, royal jelly fudge, stinging nettle tea with honey, turn honeycomb into beeswax or make a floating acorn cap candle.  So many different recipes and ideas to explore.

She even included stories of people using bee venom.  I’d heard about using bee venom before but never really looked into it. It’s been used in China for more than 2000 years. You can also use bee venom to reduce allergic reactions! 

All in all it’s a very helpful book.   For the budding apiarist this book would be helpful in explaining the benefits of bee keeping.  For the person just wanting to know more about the benefits of bees, this book provides it all!  It’s a wonderfully helpful book indeed.  🙂
About the Author:  Stephanie Bruneau is a beekeeper, herbalist, and artist. She runs
The Benevolent Bee, a small business selling honey, beeswax candles,
herbal body care products, and other handcrafted and hive-derived items.
At the Benevolent Bee “Teaching Apiary” Stephanie observes, learns, and
teaches about bees and bee behavior to students of all ages.

The Benevolent Bee: Capture the bounty of the Hive through Science, History, Home Remedies and Craft.
Stephanie Bruneau
Quarry Books
160 books
Oversized trade paperback

Reviewed for: Quarto Group

Where can you find The Benevolent Bee?

Amazon.ca: The Benevolent Bee: Capture the Bounty of the Hive through Science, History, Home Remedies and Craft – Includes recipes and techniques for honey, beeswax, propolis, royal jelly, pollen, and bee venom

Amazon.com: The Benevolent Bee: Capture the bounty of the hive through science, history, home remedies and craft. 

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Reading, Writing and Drawing.

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Today we did chapter four in “the Lamb”.  I love the pictures in the book and the lad likes answering the questions at the end of each chapter.  They are simple.  It’s a good book thus far.
Also finished off our section on Knights And castles in our world history book.    Today we learned about how the knights divided up into orders and how other countries had knights as well.   Next up will be pirates.


Then we learned about the masked shew in The ultimate guide to North American Wildlife.

This was followed by going out for a walk in the field behind the church and picking up golf balls.  The lad will keep some and others he will sell at my annual yardsale.

We did some guided drawing using pastels.   Homeschool freebie of the day had a link to Pastels today.    Here is the lad’s first ever  drawing done using pastel’s.   It was a bit of challenge for him, he likes to draw using heavy lines but with pastels sometimes you need to use a lighter hand.  🙂   Did not half bad with the sun I thought, and a good effort with Darwin the dolphin.  🙂

In the mid-afternoon we decided to organize all this junk stuff.   That’s what hubby calls it.  You know all the toilet paper rolls, empty containers, styrofoam trays that people keep in order to have craft supplies for ones children?   Well we got it organized and out of the basement and main floor of the house.  This of course inspired the lad to do some more boat building.

Playing and Doing Homeschool

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Our Tuesday generally consist of play, homeschool, play, homeschool and so forth. I normally throw in doing dishes, laundry, and so forth.

We mix it up with some computer time, science time, art work etc. It’s usually a very enjoyable day.

Today we did two lessons in Reading Kingdom. Reading Kingdom uses a whole word approach, I tend to be more of phonetics person, but I see no harm in learning a different way. I figure a varied approach is not always a bad thing. There are good and bad points to each way of learning how to read. We are currently doing a trial period to see how it goes.

We then did two lessons from Head of the Class. This is their kindergarten page. One where I wanted him to do a simple exercise but had to look at the first letter in order to figure out what colour he had to do. For a younger child I would have read the word, but I wanted the lad to sound it out and then make his decision. He did fairly well. It’s called Colours. Then I was wanting to do something kinda artsy cause well.. he’s that type of child. So I saw this one called Stitch and Sew. I expected it to be the normal yarn/shoelace around a pattern…but it was actual needle and thread sewing. The boy was QUITE pleased with himself and showed off his art work to dad. “I did it myself daddy”. I helped for the first bit and around the tricky bits, and we didn’t do the heart as shown in the video..we did a cat. The lad was quite very pleased with himself, and I have to admit, I was quite pleased as well. We talked about the parts of a needle, the thread, I tied in the bible verse about the camel going through the eye of the needle and so forth.

Then we played for a while. ended up going for a walk instead of reading and then cleaning the kitchen. on our walk we met the dirties, They make you act like dirt until
someone uses a machine to make you human again.
Here is the lad being dirt.

The lad also wanted to do his make a pizza program as well. and then we watched the spy next door and played doctor at the same time with a bunch of sick stuffies. 🙂 Always an interesting day in the life here. 🙂

just before bed he had fun making leaf creations. He made all sorts of interesting creatures, learning to resize, rotate and just exercise his creative intelligence.

Ground Hog Day

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Today we studied ground hog day.

We pulled information from the web to do this study.

The history of Ground Hog Day: Groundhog club

A pop up ground hog. We added a flashlight to be the sun and had a cloud shape as well. Will the groundhog see his shadow?

We learned abit about the groundhog.

We tried to make shadow puppets…but well… let’s just say it was an attempt. 🙂

We read this book:

We played this memory game of animals that hibernate. and tic-tac-toe ground hog here.

And we learned about Wiarton Willie (the Canadian groundhog). 🙂

and I went here to print off some PDF’s for the lad to work on. Took a bit of figuring to get them to print off as my computer is being fidgety today.

We did another craft, but I can’t find the link to it anymore.