The Story of the Easter Robin by Dandi Daley Mackall contains the Pennsylvania Dutch legend of how the robin received its red breast.In the story, the legend of Christ's blood dripping onto the robin's breast, as it tries to remove the thorny crown from His brow, is told by a grandmother to her young granddaughter, as they work together making oschter-foggel, while keeping an eye on a robin's nest outside the window.
I really appreciated that the legend is not presented as a true story, but rather as a way to see robins, not just as signs of spring, but also as reminders of Christ's sacrifice. Of course, making oschter-foggel, Easter birds from colored eggs, would be a natural craft extension to go along with the story (as others have done), but I've been wanting to try fork weaving tiny robin pompoms with the girls, since seeing the cute, card made, pompom robin at NurtureStore.
So, after helping the girls to center a six inch piece of brown yarn in the middle tines of each of their forks...
...I had them start their weaving with red yarn...
...leaving the loose end hanging beside the fork, and weaving the rest back and forth through the tines...
...until they had four rows of weaving.
Then, I switched them to brown yarn, leaving the loose ends hanging together...
...and continuing the back and forth pattern with the brown...
...all the way to the top of the fork. Then, just as usual for fork weaving, they held the forks between their knees, and tied the loose ends of the initial piece of yarn around the middle of the weaving, in between the center tines...
...to hold the loops in place as we removed them from the fork.
Then, I pulled the knot tight for them, to form a ball...
...and they trimmed the long loose ends, and cut each loop open...
...for me to trim up neat and tidy.
The girls would have loved to have done all the trimming themselves, but the pompoms are so small, I was afraid if they got carried away giving them hair cuts, we'd have nothing left...
...to glue the felt feathers and google eyes to.
Once the glue was dry...
...I made a quick nest for them by rolling down the sides of a lunch bag, with a few of the candy eggs we had enjoyed while reading the story together, thrown in for good measure.
It's great to be a homeschooler.
4 comments:
They are so cute and go so well with the book selection. I wouldn't be surprised if their second life is a math counter...:)
What a great craft to go with that book. I saw it on a book review blog and thought I wanted to find it, and now I want to even more.
I wonder if there's a book about the donkey's cross. That'd be another cool legend to make into a children's book.
This is such a pretty project!
We made these robins today. We really enjoyed making them and I really love all the projects you post.
Angela
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