Thursday, December 20, 2012

Christmas ornaments

Our household is getting back to normal.  And one more day of crosswalk duty and English etc. and then I'll start concentrating on Christmas and getting ready for the new year.

My tradition of making Christmas ornaments in my children's English classes have continued and this year I had my children sewing sequins and beads.  I had found some pre-cut felt Christmas ornaments earlier this season and so I pulled out my overflowing beads box and bought some sequins.  Now this shouldn't be hard should it?

Actually...  the kids found the mechanics of holding a needle, hanging on to their thread, keeping track of the front and back of their ornament quite a challenge.  Monday I was trying to help five 3rd and 4th girls at one time.

"Sensei!  My thread came off!

"Sensei!  There's a knot in this!"

"Sensei!  I messed this all up!"

I had pulled out the needle threader (thank goodness for that invention!  The kids had a great time threading their needles with it.) and while I untangled threads and snipped flub-ups, S-L-O-W-L-Y the kids sewed beads onto their ornaments.


But... what with a bit of singing by candlelight, and the reading of the Christmas story (in Japanese...  there are more important things than English) there wasn't a whole lot of time for sewing.

"Sensei!  Can I take home beads to sew at home?"

Great idea!  I have more beads and sequins than I'll ever need so everyone took some home.  I'm afraid I was too busy repairing sewing mistakes to take any pictures of that class.  Sorry.












And last night my two 6th grade boys tried their hands at beading...  Hmmm.  Not a great amount of difference between the 3rd and 4th grade girls and the 6th grade boys.  They went home with beads too.


Oh, and while I've got these boys here, I thought I'd show the bag that K-kun made in school.  The 6th graders have home economics at school and all the kids make a bag.  K-kun said that this was a kit that he ordered through the school.  Cool looking fabric isn't it!  Samurai motif and household crests!

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