Charlotte Mason Highschool: Handicrafts

"Creativity is not just for artists. Subjects like design and technology, music, art and drama are vitally important for children to develop imagination and resourcefulness, resilience, problem-solving, team-working and technical skills...These are the skills which will enable young people to navigate the changing workplace of the future and stay ahead of the robots, not exam grades." 

The quote above is from an article written two years ago. In the same article a professor who teaches surgery to medical students said that young people need to have a more rounded education, including creative and artistic subjects, where they learn to use their hands. He has noticed a decline in the manual dexterity (muscle memory) of students over the past decade and that it is a big problem for surgeons who need craftsmanship as well as academic knowledge. Students have become "less competent and less confident" in using their hands.

"We have students who have very high exam grades but lack tactile general knowledge."

Handiwork is just as important in the highschool years as it is with younger children. The beauty of working with the hands, whether it be woodwork, felting, patchwork, metal work, or any other type of material, is that it provides a respite for mental work and acts as a pressure release valve for the person whose time is mostly spent studying. It brings balance by working with an entirely different set of skills.

A young person of highschool age also has a wider range of handiwork available to them. They are capable of using tools that a younger child would find difficult to handle and they have a greater awareness of the safety issues involved (hopefully!). There are also more options for lessons. 

Last weekend Hails attended an all day adult workshop on drypoint printing, a form of Intaglio printing. The teacher was quite happy to include her in the group even though she's only 15 years old after I'd chatted to her. The class was a small group of five students she enjoyed the workshop so much that we've registered her for another class on Mosaics early next year. I asked her to do a written narration on the drypoint technique and this is what she wrote: 

Drypoint is a print making technique. By a print I mean an artwork that has gone through a printing press. The materials used in drypoint are a piece of acetate and a special needle with a very sharp, tiny point. Usually a reference image is printed out and placed under the acetate, then the artist traces the image onto the plate with the needle. It makes a very annoying, squeaky sound, as the needle is actually scratching into the acetate. A special drypoint ink is scraped over the top of the plate, forcing the ink into the cuts. Then the ink on the surface is rubbed off and you can see the image start to show up, as the ink is in all the scratches. Then both sides of the acetate are rubbed again to remove any excess ink, and it’s ready to print. The printing press is basically a machine with a large steel roller in the middle to force the ink down onto the paper which sits on a large printing plate underneath the roller. The acetate is placed cut side up on the printing plate, and a piece of paper that has been soaked in water is placed on top. Then three layers of thick, felt-like material is put on top of the printing plate, and it’s time to roll it through. Printing presses have a lever on the side to roll the plate underneath the roller and out the other side. Sometimes the acetate has to be rolled through a second time because not enough ink has been pressed onto the paper. 

When the image has fully transferred to the paper, you take it off the printing press and leave it to dry. Usually you have to make a few copies of the image before it turns out to your satisfaction, because if you leave too much ink on the plate, the image will be smudged, and if you don’t leave enough, the image is too light. 

The composition of the image or drawing is also important. As mentioned before, the image is usually traced onto the acetate, but it can also be drawn freehand. That is probably not wise unless you’ve been doing it for a while, because every scratch you make is going to show up on the image, and if you make a mistake, it’s very obvious.

After experimenting and trying to get the right balance of ink etc., she chose the picture above to frame. 

The workshop also included Lino (relief) printing which is quite different. There's a good explanation of Lino Printing here. 

Charlotte Mason recognised the importance of manual dexterity. Her method stresses relationships; that children need living books and 'things' - handiwork, manual skills, nature walks...and so the teaching and practice of handicrafts should be continued all the way through highschool.

'...we know that the human hand is a wonderful and exquisite instrument to be used in a hundred movements exacting delicacy, direction and force; every such movement is a cause of joy as it leads to the pleasure of execution and the triumph of success. We begin to understand this and make some efforts to train the young in the deft handling of tools and the practice of handicrafts.' - A Philosophy of Education.

Reading, Thinking, & Domesticity #4

Making Room for Contemplation

I’ve noticed more recently that I’ve become increasingly distracted and my attention span hasn’t been as good as it was. I put it down partly to getting a new iPhone (my old one didn't do much and was often unreliable). When you're using your phone for texting, emails, appointments, reminders, timers etc., it's too easy to be distracted and one thing leads to another if you're not careful.

We're also in the throes of bathroom renovations that have dragged on for over 7 weeks (update that to 9 weeks!) & that’s made life a little chaotic, too...burst waterpipes, cement dust, tradesmen not turning up when they said they would or arriving when you aren't expecting them, pluming supplier sending the wrong parts...blah, blah, blah. Besides that, my morning walks have come to a halt because of these renovations, which is a sure recipe for a scattered brain for me.

I haven't listened to any podcasts lately but then I came across this one on the Circe Institute website - an interview with author Alan Noble. I haven’t read the book they mention but the podcast discusses making room for contemplation in the context of living in a distracted world. It’s well worth listening to. I’ve been thinking about ways I can cultivate this space - technology can be a great tool and I know I won't be getting rid of my phone so I need to work around it. Distractions aren’t going to disappear even when our renovations are done - something else will jump in, I'm sure, but I'm considering how I can allow space for contemplation regardless.

My older girls read these books by Elizabeth George when they were in their teens. Moozle has read one and is most of the way through the second. She reads a chapter a few times a week as a sort of devotional, apart from her 'official' lessons, and has been enjoying them. The author covers relationships in general and content-wise, they are just right for girls aged about 12/13 years and up. The author also has a book for younger girls (ages 8 to 12 years). I've read a few of her books myself and thought they were very good.
Her husband, Jim George, has written a few books for boys on similar topics. I like the fact that they don't venture into the 'too much information' side of things and leave it up to the parents to decide when to introduce these topics.

The Green Years by A.J. Cronin - this is the second book I've read by this Scottish author and I do like his writing very much. The Keys of the Kingdom was the other book and while The Green Years was not quite as good, it was, nevertheless very enjoyable. The setting is Scotland, in the same area I came from, so that was a great attraction for me. Cronin often substitutes a fictional place name for the one he's writing about but I recognised some of the places from his evocative descriptions.

I've started to read the books above in preparation for a Women's Retreat in mid-September. I'm speaking on The Friendships of Women & I want to look at this from a couple of different angles.

Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer - a classic by the German theologian who was martyred by the Nazis. I read Eric Metaxas' biography of Bonhoeffer  two years ago so it will be good to hear from the man himself. It's only a short book (my copy is 96 pages) & was published in 1954. From what I've read so far, it's very good and fairly easy to read.

The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield. I first heard about this book via Brandy @ Afterthoughts and have since read a couple of articles about the author and was intrigued by the impact made upon her life when a couple drew her into their lives by an act of hospitality. I bought my copy at Koorong (an Aussie Christian bookshop). I usually buy new books via BookDepository but they only had the audio book in stock when I tried to order it. Koorong has a 20% off sale a few times a year so it's worth waiting for one if you want to get a few things.

The Gospel Comes With a House Key by Rosaria Butterfield - here the author looks at 'radical hospitality' using her own life as a backdrop and shows us how to enact this in our own homes.


The Barefoot Investor by Scott Page - financial planning, money management in general, investments...a hands-on approach that walks you through the process. Page is an Aussie author and some of what he covers would have to be adapted if you're not living in Australia, but it is a worthwhile book and would be helpful for anyone. My husband read it earlier this year as did our married son and it was passed on to another son who shares a house with three other young fellows and they're all reading it, and actually putting it into practice. There's some Aussie slang and corny humour in places, and of course, the situation here is different in regards to superannuation, loans, health funds etc, but his general financial strategies may be used anywhere.
This would be a great book for an older high school student or any young adult, or those struggling with debt to help them manage their finances and plan for the future.
The book below has been updated for the 2017-2018 financial year.

Handicrafts with Children: Reversible Bunting

We've hosted birthday parties, engagements, baby showers, and other events at our place and a bit of decoration using fabric bunting has helped to pretty things up, especially out of doors. Below is a section of our verandah the girls decorated when we held my daughter's baby shower here last year.

Our second daughter, Zana, is getting married in September. It's an outdoor wedding and she asked her younger sister to make her some bunting to help decorate the venue. Zana chose a tone on tone white fabric & gave us 5 metres (about 5½ yards) of material which was sufficient for 150 double triangles with some fabric left over (about half a metre).
We used the bunting we had to make a diamond-shaped cardboard template.

Moozle traced around the diamond-shaped template and then cut the shapes out. The diamond fabric was then folded in half, wrong sides together, and ironed.

Width of triangle at the top when folded in half - 16 cm (6​ 1/4 in)

Sides - 22 cm (about 8½ in)

Each triangle was sewn with a 1.5cm (½ in) seam across the top - the seam allowance can be adjusted depending on the thickness of the cord you use:

Using a safety pin, cord was threaded through the seam allowance of each triangle

A small stitch sewn on each triangle can help to keep it in place but we left them unstitched so they can be moved apart or brought closer together. 

This is an ideal way to use up scraps of fabric, as you can see from the top photo where this was done. I like the scrappy look, but I think the white will look lovely in a garden setting for a wedding.

Handicrafts: colourful coasters

What You Need:

3 sheets of thin cork (packs of 15 available from Riot craft stores)
Thick white paper (such as a page from an art journal - not printer paper as it's too thin)
Glue (stick glue is fine)
A black waterproof marker
Matte/Gloss Mod Podge (I think we ordered ours from here. Expensive but goes a long way)
Paint brush for Mod Podge
Waterproof stamp pads

What You Do:

• Stick the 3 pieces of cork on top of each other (the cork from Riot has peel-off adhesive backing) 

• Put a circular object on the cork and trace around it, and then do the same on a piece of paper (Both circles should be the same size)   

• Cut out the circle on the cardboard and paper

• Glue the paper to the cork

•  Using a waterproof marker, draw or stencil a pattern onto the paper, then leave till fully dry.

Cover the paper with Mod Podge (waterproofs & seals), and leave to dry.

Rub stamp pads onto the paper to add colour

Do another 1-2 coats of Mod Podge & let dry thoroughly before use

We use these stamp pads for all sorts of projects:

Mod Podge is also avaiable at Spotlight here in Australia

Moozle hunting up craft supplies...

Reading, Thinking & Domesticity #1

My plan is to have a regular post that will include a variety of domestically related ideas and practical matters plus things that I've read that don't make it into a more formal 'book review,' such as articles, current affairs and anything else that I think is interesting.

'Domesticity' - Latin,  domesticus, from domus, a house (home)
The word 'domesticate' means to accustom to live near the habitation of man; to tame. 'Domestication' is the act of taming or reclaiming wild animals. Sometimes it feels like that in family life. We're taming and reclaiming lives, including our own.

Liturgy has been a word that has resonated with many of us over the past few years. The dictionary definition is:

  A form or formulary according to which public religious worship, especially Christian worship,

 is conducted.

I emphasised the word public above as it is an important point, especially in light of the article below. Are we seeking authentic community & commitment, or self-expression and aesthetic experience? 

‘The desire for liturgical forms of worship that are structured, ancient and formal, steeped in Scripture and Church Fathers, is commendable if the desire is for that liturgy to shape community life together, rather than being a new form of aesthetic and preference for a consumer-driven culture.But if all this is is a reflection of the "hipster magpie" making serendipitous finds in the vintage store alongside the 78 records then it's highly suspect. Taking a piece from this era, an object from that era, and blending it all together to form one's own "authentic experience", completely divorced from the values and frame of the cultures and eras from which these things are taken, simply means that yet again style has indeed trumped substance.In other words, as Jamie Smith points out, the point of all liturgy is to embed  itself as practice in our communal lives.  But if the practice of our individual lives is to be a private consumer then, ironically, a return to liturgy can mask such a practice with the appearance of worship.’


A couple of new authors I read in 2017 were:

Dorothy B. Hughes who wrote The Expendable Man in 1963. Published by Persephone Books, this is a suspenseful story that starts with a solitary man, a young doctor, driving through the desert towns of the American Southwest, as he returns to his hometown for a wedding. From the beginning there is an undercurrent of unease that builds up as the story progresses. It is a time of racial unrest, where an innocent decision taken by the wrong person in an atmosphere of prejudice, may have disastrous consequences.
A great story with a romantic thread that despite its lack of character development kept me spellbound till the end.

There was a picture in a gold frame hung on the mottled gray of the wallpaper. It was of a country cottage, smothered with roses, banked in green, shaded by leafy trees with a brook at their feet. In spite of what this man was, in spite of what he had done, the pathos of that picture smote Hugh. That it was there, a home, an old home far from this desert wasteland. That misshapen old relic was once a country child, was once a boy with dreams, once a student with aspirations, once a Doctor of Medicine. The poignant cry rose silently in him: What can happen to a man? Why? 


I’ve read books in the spy/espionage genre by John Buchan and Helen MacInnes and thoroughly enjoyed them but this was my first foray into the darker world of subterfuge where things don’t end well. I was prepared for a dismal ending with The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carré (also published in 1963) but I was interested in reading something a bit different, and le Carré's book is set during the Cold War, an era that has always intrigued me. However, this was such a good story that I tended to reflect not on the ending, which was inevitably tragic, but upon the clever plot, the twists and all the little hints I missed while I was reading.

John le Carré’s was a British security agent who left his life of espionage to write full-time after the success of his third novel, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. The book thrust the author into the spotlight when it was published in 1963. Written over the course of six weeks, le Carré had flown from Bonn to Berlin as soon as the work on the Berlin Wall began and looked on in disgust and terror. His observations of the ‘perfect symbol of the monstrosity of ideology gone mad,’ coupled with his deeply unhappy professional and private life, resulted in this chilly, disturbing tale of Alec Leamas, the spy who wanted to end his life of espionage, to ‘come in from the cold.’
Burnt out and cynical, Leamas agrees to one last assignment before he leaves his life of spying. Unwittingly he is used by British Security to secure the position of a British double agent (a man Leamus hates and believes to be the enemy) and to his dismay, ends up in East Germany. There he finds that the young woman, the one who had begun to awaken his humanity, has been caught up in the machinations of both sides because of her association with him.
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold is a bleak look into the ruthless game of espionage with its accompanying lies, fears and treachery but it also has a few swift moments of beauty:

He knew then what it was that Liz had given him; the thing that he would have to go back and find if he ever got home to England: it was the caring about little things - the faith in ordinary life; the simplicity that made you break up a bit of bread into a paper bag, walk down to the beach and throw it to the gulls. It was this respect for triviality which he had never been allowed to possess...

Inspiring Reads from 2017 


One of the best books I read last year was Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng. In fact it's one of the most inspiring books I've ever read and I wholeheartedly recommend it!!

Exceptional books for those aged about 12 or 13 years and older were The Forgotten Daughter and The Small Woman.

Domestics

I've been cooking regular family meals for close on thirty years and in the last twenty years, I've had to cook in bulk for my growing family. Cooking en masse doesn't lend itself  to gourmet creations - at least not in my case. I have a few dishes that are standard, mostly because they are popular and don't require too much work to produce. Every now & again - actually, very rarely, I come across a new recipe that makes it into my hit list. This was one I found late last year, although I've changed the herbs around a bit to accomodate the eaters here: Herby Green Roast Chicken
The author of the website is a diabetic so the meals are low carb but she has a whole range of options which work well for families plus a free ebook. I'm trying out a few of the dishes in the ebook and this is one that I liked but everyone else was turned off by the green colour: broccoli sandwich bread.

Something I've done this year is to use cauliflower in place of white sauce when making lasagne. I just use a packet of frozen cauliflower, steam it, and them put it in the blender with a few dollops of ricotta cheese & a little seasoning. It thickens up very well and makes a good, healthy substitute.

I've always been good at beefing up mince, pardon the pun - I grate a huge amount of zucchini and mix it up in the mince as I cook it. Sometimes I add a grated carrot or two as well, but the zucchini alone is great. I add some burrito seasoning with some hot water and let it all simmer for a while. If I need to extend it even more I'll add a tin of kidney beans and some tomato puree or passata sauce. Great with salad, burritos & grated cheese.

We're in the middle of summer here and we're reasonably close to a number of beaches and my sons often head off to one of them on the weekend or after work if it's been really hot. A couple of the beaches are known for their strong rips. I read this article today about rip tides that occurred on a Sydney beach eighty years ago. This was a more unusual event, but rips kill many more people every year in Australia than shark attacks but they don't get anywhere near the same attention & warnings.

Many people think it’s just tourists and poor swimmers who get caught in rips currents. In fact, it’s young men aged 15-39 years who are most likely to die in rips. Rips are the number one hazard on Australian beaches.

Patchwork

I really like the look of triangles in patchwork and recently found an easier method of sewing them.
So now I'm experimenting with all my blue fabric scraps...

These are only two ways but there are oodles of options, as we keep finding out...

Praise to the Lord, who o’er all things so wondrously reigneth,
Shelters thee under His wings, yea, so gently sustaineth!
Hast thou not seen how thy desires e’er have been
Granted in what He ordaineth? 

Education - an Act of Faith

'Education, like faith, is the evidence of things not seen...' so Charlotte Mason said.

Educating my own children has been an act of faith in many ways. Sometimes you just have to be patient and wait for the fruit of what you're doing to show itself. Education requires discipline, time, energy and perseverance. It's not an overnight venture. Sometimes I need to remind myself to:

 '...stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.'

1 Corinthians 15:58

With the above in mind, here are some of the areas I've been seeing fruit in and where education is something my daughter is pursuing of her own accord: 

The Discipline of Regular Drawing Practice

 

Nature notebook - this is now a regular & self-initiated habit after many years of having it as part of our weekly schedule:

Our current read-aloud (some editing required) - Natural History from the point of view of a ten year old boy living on the island of Corfu just prior to the second world war and a peek into a living education - we're enjoying this so much!

'With the summer came Peter to tutor me, a tall, handsome young man fresh from Oxford, with decided ideas on education which I found rather trying to begin with. But gradually the atmosphere of the island worked its way insidiously under his skin, and he relaxed and became quite human. At first the lessons were painful to an extreme: interminable wrestling with fractions and percentages, geological strata and warm currents, nouns, verbs, and adverbs. But, as the sunshine worked its magic on Peter, the fractions and percentages no longer seemed to him an overwhelmingly important part of life and they were gradually pushed more and more into the background; he discovered that the intricacies of geological strata and the effects of warm currents could be explained much more easily while swimming along the coast, while the simplest way of teaching me English was to allow me to write something each day that he would correct...'

Gerald Durrell

Last week we had exams for Year 6, Term 2. I asked Moozle to write a poetic narration about 

Antony & Cleopatra:

On a roll with her drawing of roses

 Weather report, with some artistic license

Handiwork - scrapbooking has been all the rage. This is something all my girls have enjoyed but I prefer working with fabric and haven't shared their activities in this area. Fortunately, they have an Aunty who enjoys scrapbooking and when Moozle started showing a interest in scrapbooking as her older sisters had done, Her Aunty started paying her in scrapbooking paper to wash her car.
This week Moozle had her first 'consignment.' A lady at church asked her to make up an assortment of gift cards, which she paid for and then said that she would act as her 'agent' and drum up some business. Moozle is excited because now she can go out and buy more supplies!

A couple of tags she whipped up this afternoon

"I'd like to add some beauty to life," said Anne dreamily. "I don't exactly want to make people know more...though I know that is the noblest ambition...but I'd love to make them have a pleasanter time because of me...to have some little joy or happy thought that would never had existed if I hadn't been born."

Lucy Maud Montgomery

Listening to this when we're driving

Moozle's free reading

 The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie - this is the first book in the Tommy and Tuppence series, which I let my children read when they are about 12 years of age. (Free online here) I leave Christie's other books for a later stage but this series is fun and a good introduction to the crime novel. Partners in Crime is another in the series she's been reading.

*  Children learn from real things in the real world

*  We train a child to have good habits and self-control

*  The mind needs ideas of all kinds, so the child's curriculum should be varied and generous with    
    many subjects included.

   (see Charlotte Mason's 20 Principles)

Weekly Review

We've just finished an exam week but as our scanner is defunct I'm not able to post any examples at present.
Instead, here are some places of interest and other links I hope you will find useful.

The High Quality Global University which costs next to nothing. Very interesting...our eldest daughter is nearly 28 years old and has just finished paying off her HECs debt from her degree. When my husband went through university in the 1980's, the universities in Australia had no tuition costs. It's a very different situation for our children now so we were very interested to read this article.

Their website is here.

Enjoying this audio:

David Clarke also narrates some other great books. See his page at Librivox.
There are some books that really need a British narrator (or someone who can make themselves sound British) - Sherlock Holmes is one of these, of course.
Ruth Golding is another British narrator and she has a list of other Librivox narrators she recommends on her blog.

I enjoyed listening to this Podcast during the week. Folksongs have always been a part of my life, growing up and afterwards. Some good thoughts here:

Moozle has been paper crafting and making Christmas presents (and much mess...)
This is a video she's used, one of the 'Sweet Bio Design' series on YouTube that she enjoys. It's in Italian but has English subtitles:





This is another she used for ideas...mostly for the actual box and then added her own decorations.





I've started putting together a page with all of the Australian/Asia Pacific living books we've used. It will take a little while but it's here in its beginning stages: Towards an Australian Charlotte Mason Curriculum.



Linking up at Weekly Wrap-up

A Fortnight's Review

It's the 'official' school holidays here, not that we follow them, but we tend to end up changing our usual schedule because we don't have our regular weekly activities. Last week Moozle and I taught a group of ten children how to weave using a hula hoop as a loom in kid's holiday programme our church runs twice a year. Benj volunteered as one of the leaders and helped to run games & activities. At other times he's been rostered on First Aid as he has his Senior First Aid Certificate.

The ten children in our workshop were aged around 6 to 10 years of age; about equal numbers of boys and girls. None of them had ever done anything like this and had no idea what they were in for. One little boy wasn't impressed at first. The workshop he volunteered for was cancelled so he got put into ours. "I can't do this...this is boring!" Not a great start, but I kept telling him he'd actually enjoy it once he got the hang of it. The workshop was about an hour and a half long and Moozle & I had already put the warp on the looms (and spent a couple of days cutting up old t-shirts...) so we just had to teach them how to weave. About 10 minutes before the end of the class I told them we'd have to start looking at finishing the weaving and getting it off the looms. The kids didn't want to stop - including the reluctant boy! They kept saying, "Just one more colour..." so their weaving would be bigger. I took some photos once they got the hang of it and they were all thrilled with their finished work.

There are oodles of links on Pinterest and tutorials on youtube on how to weave on a hula hoop.
Update: a video link is here (they use a fancier sort of hula hoop in this one but we just had the normal cheap version) & here.
 

Our Reading

Benj:

The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis - I wrote about this book here.
He's also continuing with The Root of the Righteous by A.W. Tozer which I finished recently.

Moozle:  

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin - this is a well-written mystery story that Moozle really enjoyed. A good puzzle with twists that keeps you guessing until the end. A Newbery Medal winner, 1979.

Me:

Stalin: Russia's Man of Steel by Albert Marrin. A good biography for ages 13 years and up. Some thoughts on it here.

A Decline in Prophets by Sulari Gentill - this is the second book in this murder series. I wrote about the first one here.
Set in Australia during the 1930's, this book picks up in pace from the first one, as I predicted, and launches almost immediately into the action. The very likeable main characters from the first book turn up again and find themselves caught up in a crime scene on board a cruise ship. Again, the author weaves crime and mystery with historical events and some notable people of the time and creates a very interesting and unusual story. A great way to learn about some not so well known parts of Australia's history.

Other bits & pieces:


I've been using Singapore Maths for a few years now with Moozle and while I think it's very good at showing the 'why' behind some of the maths, I don't think it's a thorough as some of the maths I've used with her older siblings. I was going through some books I'd packed away and found some unused "Key to..." workbooks so I started using them plus I'm going back to an A Beka text I used in the past as it covers things like clocks!! Most of the clocks at our place are digital and I was shocked recently when I realised that she had difficulty telling the time on a normal clock. She'll still do Singapore until we've finished the books I've already bought and then we may shift to Saxon for high school.

My husband and I have very different tastes in movies but we watched this together and both thought it was very good. Set at the time of the building of the Berlin Wall, it is based on real events and  raises some thoughtful questions regarding moral codes and law. See History vs Hollywood for more details.

Linking up at Weekly Wrap-up

Handicrafts Ideas for Children

Handicrafting is something that has aways given me great satisfaction. In the busyness of bringing up a large family, I always tried to have something I could put my hands to, if only for a few minutes at a time. So much of my day was taken up with doing work that left no visible evidence at the end of the it. Working on a creative project over a period of time produced something tangible and very satisfying.
The world our children are growing up in is the world of the instant, the quick fix. I made a list one time of everything I could think of that could be made instantly. It was significantly long but 'handicrafts' wasn't on it.
As with many other things, learning and aquiring certain skills is so much easier in childhood. When  my older children finished homeschooling and started studying and then working, they had less time for other things. Handicrafts were one of those things that seldom got a look in but I know the skills remain and that they will return to them later on. I used to weave but I haven't set up my loom since my eldest was born. But the knowledge is still there and I'll get back to it again. In the meantime I've developed other skills that are easier to just pick up and do as I have time - quilting and patchwork at present. I started a quilt for a daughter two years ago and I'm still working on it but I know it will be something she will treasure.
This article makes an interesting point on passive entertainment, virtual experience and the lack of true creativity: Handicraft: The Ancient Tradition of Creating Things with Your Hands

Don't despise the day of small beginnings (Zechariah 4:10)...how often have I said that to myself? 

Young children may not produce an heirloom but they are aquiring skills and honing their hands and can take pleasure & pride in their work.

Salt Dough & Origami have been all the rage at our place lately. We haven't had heirloom quality productions...yet...but I have always loved seeing my chidren busy with their hands, losing track of time and absorbed in what they are doing.

Moozle just had a birthday and she scored oodles of lovely paper and has been making dresses...
I thought these were really cute. They make pretty gift cards - with some double-sided tape on the back to hold them in place on various coloured background paper.

The dresses below were significantly larger & made with thicker paper to be strung together & used for bunting...

This video shows how they are done:





Salt Dough is a great handicraft for all ages and a good option if you have young boys. We were introduced to salt dough after I found a book when browsing in the craft section of the library & was really surprised at how creative it can be.

Later I found Dough Crafts by Isolde Kiskalt at a secondhand book sale which has been helpful to have on hand for ideas. Salt Dough is cheap to make - you can start with just salt & flour, some kitchen implements & away you go. We bake or air dry the dough & decorate with water colours (or just leave it plain) after it has dried & cooled. Then it may be varnished which helps longevity and protects the salt dough model against humidity.

Before & after with the model painted...

Snipping with scissors gave the echidna (modelled off a hedgehog) his spines. The snout isn't quite long enough for an echidna but I thought she did a good job with the scissors.

Coffee beans were suggested for the eyes but we didn't have any. Some kitchen utensils that are very useful are: a garlic press (good for making hair), a sieve, scissors, skewers (for patterns on the dough but also to test if the dough is baked properly).

Salt Dough Recipe

2 cups flour (plain, 'all purpose')
2 cups salt
1/2 cup water

Mix the ingredients together & knead thoroughly - an electric mixer or food processor will give the best results.
The dough dries out very quickly so cover it up when not in use.

Salt dough may be air dried but it takes a while, depending on the thickness of the model. The dough will take twice as long to dry in an electric oven compared to a gas oven (microwaving isn't suitable).
The dough will crack if it's dried too quickly.

The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.

When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.

 

 John Ruskin (1819-1900)

  
Update: July 2016 - this is Moozle's latest (ongoing) project using the abundance of leftover material I've used on different projects. It's fairly slow work but she's been doing it while I read aloud: