We followed along with World Book from Christmas in Finland to Christmas in Denmark.
As I' mentioned previously, these books are part of a series for children. I've added a smattering of them into our Christmas Countdown, because each volume contains, not only a nice description of the Christmas customs of each country, but also recipes for traditional desserts and dishes, and instructions for several crafts. Another year, we might countdown to Christmas with this series alone.
The children were intrigued to find that the Danes decorate for Christmas with hearts. In fact, one of the crafts at the back of the book is for woven paper hearts, like the ones we made to hold our cards and candy at Valentine's Day.The children flatly refused to do a "Valentine's craft" at Christmastime, and opted instead to try making three dimensional, cut paper star ornaments, to hang from the knobs of our kitchen cupboards.
There is a pattern to trace and follow in the book (and also reproduced, here, on flicker). We opted to freehand the star shape, so we could make our stars a bit smaller - which also makes the additional cuts harder - too hard for younger children, though the general idea of the craft is simple enough.
Basically, it involves folding a piece of paper in half, and cutting half of an eight pointed star from the folded edge of the paper...
...then cutting three concentric lines in from the outside edge, on both sides, starting at the fold line...
...but not quite meeting at the top.
The star is then unfolded...
...and starting with the outside edge, the cut edges on the left are folded back...
...and the ones on the right are folded forward, to give the star a three-dimensional look.
Once we had the edges folded out, about evenly spaced around the star, we used a threaded needle to poke through a string for hanging, near the top point.
We proceeded to fiddle with the folds for pretty much the entire day, until we were finally happy with the spacing. But, they are mesmerizing shapes, as they twirl and move, with each breath of air in the room.
It's great to be a homeschooler.
Linked with the History and Geography meme at All Things Beautiful.
That star is simple and complex at the same time! Beautiful...
ReplyDeleteWe are doing a Christmas Around the World theme this year, too. I like your stars very much.
ReplyDeleteThis seems like a fabulous series. I have bookmarked it. Do the books also include stories?
ReplyDeleteVery neat and they don't look too hard to make. They remind me of metal garden twirlers I've seen outside during the summer.
ReplyDeleteKylie - They all include non-fiction write-ups about the countries at Christmastime, but some also have Christmas stories and legends from those countries. Because Hans Christian Andersen was Danish - Christmas in Denmark includes a couple of his christmas stories.
ReplyDeleteThis is great! Thanks for the photos and clear instructions!
ReplyDeleteThe star is very pretty.
ReplyDeleteSo behind on blog reading........ That must have been hard not to tear the paper.
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