Advent Week 2: Peace

Supplies

Yesterday was the second Sunday of Advent and we celebrate it as Peace. In Hazel's Advent calendar yesterday she opened to find a piece of white wool felt, white glitter clay and the word peace. I pulled out our dove cookie cutter to make these crafts. Since we had a bit of a crazy weekend, we have not finished them all, but did one this morning. We took the white felt, and I traced the cookie cutter in two pieces (the body and the wing). Then I attempted to write "Peace" on it, but it is not too clear. We glued the wing on and eventually will glue a ribbon on it.

For now we have put our Advent ornaments near the candles on the Advent wreath.

It helps remind us what each candle is for. We are planning on making a clay dove as well and I'm hoping to have Hazel try to "write" on it. We just have not had time yet to do this.

Hazel is loving the craft Advent calendar. She really is enjoying painting the wooden figures. We are a bit behind because of all the preparation I was doing at church for our Night in Bethlehem which went really well.  We still need to make our donkey ornament.

If you are looking for some other peace craft ideas or Advent craft ideas, check out Oriental Trading today and tomorrow they are running a special of free Shipping on Any Order PLUS a $10 eGift card with orders of $59 or more through 11:59 p.m. December 10, 2013 with the code FW50FS. (They have the same next Monday and Tuesday with the code FW51FW, and the 21st is the last day for ground shipping delivery by Christmas.)  Here is a search for Advent on their site. 

For Peace ornaments, they have the peace sign bag tag beaded craft (Steve does not like the peace sign, so we avoid it) and a peace sign ornament kit,  a foam peace ornament, inspirational jar craft (which includes "Christ is born" and "Joy to the world" as well as "Peace"), dove ornament kits (which include peace, love and joy) and I think my favorite is the Peace Prayer bracelet kit. If you want more ideas, you can also visit my Advent Pinterest Board.

For now, may Peace be with you and your family in this very busy season! If you are looking for more Advent ideas you can see our post on Hope last week and our Advent calendar post for this year.

Peace Through Love teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Have you entered my current giveaway yet?

Monday the United States celebrates the holiday remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Last week I shared a simple craft and a round-up of books to learn about the holiday and about the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. Since Dr. King believed in change through peace and getting rid of hatred by love. 

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

I wanted to do some crafts involving symbols of peace and love. I went looking for some inspiration on Pinterest. I knew I had pinned some dove crafts in my Religion/Church Board. For my first craft I was inspired by Holy Spirit Craft - Make a Dove from a Paper Plate on Catholic Icing.

This craft is easy. You draw the head to tail body on the plate and cut it out and then use the scraps to get the two wings. You add a face and feet and glue the wings on. Then I added a heart button and the words "Peace through Love". Now we have a visual reminder of Dr. King's teachings.

For a similar craft I was inspired by Handprint Dove on Free Kids Crafts. I used Hazel's handprints for the wings and the printable provided by Free Kids Crafts. Then I glued it on to a large heart doily (which Hazel is using for her Valentines). I thought it made another nice visual of Dr. King's teachings. 

For more ideas check out my Civil Rights/MLK Pinterest Board and join us tomorrow for some more on Martin Luther King, Jr. including more books to share and more crafts!!

Fairy Tales in Different Cultures--A Cinderella Tale from Argentina

Today we are going back to Cinderella tales. The one for today is from Argentina. I found a copy of it translated in English in Latin American Folktales: Stories from Hispanic and Indian Traditions edited by John Bierhorst. Before we get into the tale, let's look a bit at Argentina.

Argentina is located in the Southeast of South America. It is officially called Argentine Republic. It is the eighth largest country in the world and the second in Latin America. It claims sovereignty over part of Antarctica, the Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

Europeans first arrived in the area in 1502. Pedro de Mendez established a settlement in the area that is now Buenos Aires in 1536 but it was abandoned in 1541 when it was destroyed by natives. Unlike the rest of Latin America the colonization of Río de la Plata estuary was not influenced by the gold rush since there were no precious metals in the area. However, the name Argentina comes from the Latin word for silver since they explorers heard rumors of silver mountains located there. Buenos Aires was established again in 1580. After much war, Argentina claimed its independence from the Spanish rule.

The climate of Argentina varies from subtropical in the north to subpolar in the south.  The animals also vary greatly depending on the climate. The north has the pumas, flamingos, hummingbirds, and more and the south has seals, sea lions and penguins. The west has the Andes Mountains, so it also has llamas and mountain animals.

Now onto our tale. This tale is called Rice from Ashes. Again I found it translated in Latin American Folktales: Stories from Hispanic and Indian Traditions edited by John Bierhorst. It has many similarities to Cinderella tales we have looked at from around the world. 

The story begins with a girl who has lost her mother and her father remarries a woman with two daughters of her own. From the start the stepmother and stepsisters are cruel to the girl, and she only has a lamb to keep her company.

Source

One day the stepmother tells her to kill her lamb. The girl starts to cry. The stepmother takes a plate of rice and spills it into the ashes in the hearth. She tells the girl that if she does not separate each grain of rice from the ashes by the time the stepmother wakes from her nap the lamb will have to die. The stepmother goes to nap and the girl cries. A dove comes and talks to the girl. The dove tells the girl to take a nap and it will clean the rice from the ashes. The dove has a flock of doves come to help and the task is taken care of. The stepmother is angry when she awakens from her nap.

By Keven Law, Los Angeles, USA [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The next day the stepmother pours sand into lentils for the task. The birds came back to do the task. The following day the stepmother throws sugar onto the hearth and an ant comes to help the girl. The next day the stepmother gives the girl two large bags of wool to spin. The lamb helps the girl and gets it done, however the stepmother finds one stray piece of wool on the lamb and orders her to kill the lamb. The lamb tells the girl to calm down and butcher and she will find a cup in the bowels. The lamb tells her to keep the cup forever. She does this and while at the stream, a little man comes and asks her for a drink. She gives him one with her cup.

The girl misses her lamb now that she has no one to talk to. The stepsisters decide to punish her more by asking their mother to buy them lambs. The stepsisters' lambs ate all the grass and the mother insisted on butchering them. The lambs told each sister in turn not to be sad and to find the cup and to be good to others. Each one found the cup inside the lambs' bowels. The little man comes to each of them and each stepsister in turn refuses to serve the little man, who happens to be God. 

Now there was a prince in town whose mother told him on her deathbed that he would marry a girl with a gold cup since it had been predicted by his godmother who was a fairy at his birth. He made an announcement in town for all the young women with gold cups to be presented to him. The stepmother ran to the king to have the prince come meet her daughters with their gold cups from the lambs. 

When the prince arrived the two stepsisters shoved one another to be the first to present the cup to the prince. The stepmother told the older girl to show the cup. The prince saw the gold cup and assumed this was who he was to marry. The prince put her on his horse and started for the palace. Along the way a bird sang out of a tree in the cemetery that he had the wrong girl. He asked to see the cup again and it was now iron. He turned back and got the other stepsister. Again the bird told him he had the wrong girl. He looked at her cup again and it had become iron. He took her home and insisted that their had to be another girl. He searched the house and found the orphan girl in the kitchen. He asked to see her gold cup. He put her on the horse to go the palace and as they went by the cemetery the bird told him he had the right one, however he asked to see her cup again and it was still gold. 

The girl and the prince were married and she became a very good queen who especially was kind to orphans.

A Belated Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Snack

So in the book we took out of the library on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, it defined celebrate with the word party in it. That is of course what Hazel took as the meaning. So she wanted to have a party. She called Nonni and asked if they could have a party since Nonni usually has her on Mondays. Nonni planned a pizza party for them. I got to wondering about snack/party ideas. I googled and really only found ideas for classes like have everyone bring a different fruit for a fruit salad or doing an entire multicultural meal. I did not have time to plan this and wanted something fun to do with Hazel. I had been saving a sugar cookie mix from Trader Joe's (they only sell them around Christmas, but we love them). So we pulled out our hand cookie cutter (that I bought for our church's Stewardship campaign last year) and made some sugar cookies. Now with more planning I could have been more creative. Next year I am thinking we will do this but the colors will be frosting using the book The Colors of Us as a guideline. You know start with white frosting and make different skin tone shades by adding food color similar to what we did with paint in this post.

Our first task was to bake the cookies. I had pulled out our hand cookie cutter as well as a dove one. Hazel wanted to make more doves, but luckily I was faster than she was so we got more hands.

While the cookies cooled we organized our decorations which was a task in itself since they were all in one bag. I thought of using M&M's since they are one of Hazel's favorites. In fact I bought a bag or regular and a bag of Valentine's Day so we would have pink, white as well as the brown, yellow and red. But I got to thinking about how the red is so red and they no longer do the tan. Then I thought of the candy store at our big furniture store where you can buy M&M's by the color by the pound as well as jelly beans. Since they did not have skin tone shades of M&M's there, I went with jelly beans. (And yes one of the local furniture stores has crazy attractions in it. The one near us is themed as Bean Town and has a candy store, a local ice cream stand, liquid fireworks, Omni theater and more. The one near where I use to live was themed as New Orleans and had a whole multimedia show of Bourban Street and looked like a theme park.)

Then we got to decorating. We did one hand of each color and then we did some of mixed colors to represent mixed races. Then we decorated one dove in white. The rest I told Hazel she could do what she wanted. While she finished them, I arranged the hands and put the white peace dove in the center.

Then to make her happy we put all the birds in the center.

And a close up of her birds:

So next year we will do something similar but take the time to make the different shades of frosting. I am also going to think of some other fun foods/party foods we could make to celebrate the day. Do you have any ideas? I would love to hear them!

Raven's Gift: A Feathered Flight of Faith -- #ReadYourWorld Review

 

Disclosure: I was sent a copy of this book in order to provide an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Today is the BIG DAY!! It is Read Your World Day! To celebrate we get to share our last Read Your World review for 2026! The book is Raven's Gift: A Feathered Flight of Faith by Claire Annette Noland and illustrated by Desiree Cordon. It is recommended for ages 4 to 8 and is a Christmas book. But before I tell you about this fun book, let's tell you about Read Your World Day!

Advent Week 3: Joy

Have you entered my current giveaway yet? Last day to enter is the 16th at midnight!

We are beginning the third week of Advent. The theme for this week is Joy. The joy Jesus brings the world. Now this week is special because it has the pink candle. Now last year I did a little research on Advent and Advent wreaths and discovered how the pink candle became pink. At one time Advent was a more solemn time similar to Lent. The Pope decided to lighten the mood on the third Sunday of Advent and passed out pink roses to his congregation. This became a tradition and eventually the candle was changed to pink to take on the rose tradition. (Source)

Our craft for the week of Joy is some clay ornaments. Since we had not made the Peace ornaments yet, we did those too. We also made some clay Hope ornaments (and Love) with the leftover clay. For Joy we used a star and used a "joy" rubber stamp. We used Sculpey polymer clay and had to bake them. I have my parents old toaster oven to bake polymer clay in since you should not use the same oven as you cook food in due to the fumes. 

For Peace we used our dove cookie cutter. Since we do not have a "peace" rubber stamp, we had to write it ourselves. We used one of the tools from Hazel's scratch paper. (We used this tool for the holes to hang the ornaments as well.)

I let Hazel write "Peace" herself.  Her spacing was off, but she did a good job. I guess my toaster oven burned the white clay a bit since they came out an orangy brown. I baked them on the correct temperature and for less time. Oh, well.

For Hope we used the star again. We also attempted to swirl the two colors together and was more successful than we had been for the Joy ones. We again had to write Hope ourselves and Hazel did her own. I am happy with how they came out. Now I need to add strings so we can hang them.

So now we get to light the third candle--the pink one. With each candle we remember the past themes. We have been leaving one of our ornaments by the candle to remind us.

I loving having them there! What are you doing to celebrate Advent?

For more on Advent check out:

• Advent Wreaths
• Week 2: Peace
• Week 1: Hope
• Advent Calendar Round-Up
• Our Craft Advent Calendar

Christmas Crafts Round-Up from 2011 - 2013

Last week I did a round-up of some of our favorite Christmas books that really share the story of Christmas or the giving spirit. This week I thought I would share a round-up of the Christmas crafts we have done since Crafty Moms Share started. But before we share our past crafts here is a clip angel we made for one of Hazel's angel crafts from her Advent calendar this year. I was inspired by the Easy Paperclip Angel Ornament on Crafty Journal that I saw on Pinterest.

We used glittery pipe cleaners instead of ribbon and wooden beads instead of pearls.

I think the pipe cleaner made it easier for Hazel to do on her own. We made two before breakfast one morning. Now as I was going through my Christmas crafts of the past, I discovered I had too many for just one collage (Picmonkey wouldn't let me put them in one), so I made four. Two are general Christmas crafts, one is nativity crafts and one is "gingerbread" house crafts.

1) Felt  Peace Dove (Advent Week 2: Peace)
2) Paper Star Bag (Christmas Prep)
3) Felt Covered Ornaments
4) More Felt Covered Ornaments (Simple Christmas Ornaments/Decorations)
5) Snow Globes (apparently I didn't share these before, but they have liquid in them)
6) Painted Wooden Ornaments
7)  Painted Cardboard/Paper Mache Ornaments
8) Paper Advent Wreath
9) Coffee Cup Christmas Tree
10) Coffee Cup Angel
11) Kenyan-inspired Clay Ornaments
12) Kenyan-inspired Wire Ornament
13) Simple Christmas Cards (Operation Christmas)
14) Felt St. Nicholas
15) Felt Candy Cane Mouse (Holiday Stroll)
16)  Hope Ornament (Hope--First Week of Advent)

1) Felt Sheep
2) Our Salt Dough Ornaments
3) Angels, Angels Everywhere and Angels with a Toddler and  Some Angels
4) Pasta Wreath
5) Pasta Tree
6) Needle Felted Dala Horse
7) Needle Felted Elf
8)  Mini Advent Wreath (Advent Calendars -- Start of Advent)
9) Popsicle Stick & Button Trees
10) Button Tree Card
11) Straw Christmas Tree (Christmas Crafts for Kids ebook Review)
12) Snow Globes (Busy Day Getting Ready for Christmas)
13) Jingle Bell Crafts
14) Punched Paper Chain
15) Felt Ornaments
16) Fruit Candy Cane (Christmas Crafts for Kids ebook Review)
17) Toddler Fun Tongue Depressor Elf
18) Stick Reindeer (A Lovely Visit)
19) Christmas Book Ornaments (A Lovely Visit)
20) Beaded Wreath Pin
21) Winter Flower Fairies
22) Poinsettia Fairy
23) Painted Pine Cones
24) Applesauce and Cinnamon Ornaments
25) More Salt Dough Ornaments

Foam Trees and Gingerbread Men

Pine Cone Christmas Trees & Busy Weekend Slow Down

Beaded Candy Canes

Beaded Candy Canes

Nativity Crafts

1)  Nativity Bracelet (Oriental Trading Christmas Craft Kit Review)
2) Foam Nativity Kit
3) Cloth Nativity
4) Toilet Paper Roll Nativity (Focus on the Nativity and
5) Wooden Nativity Pieces (Advent Week 2: Peace and Advent Calendars--Start of Advent)
6) Craft Stick & Felt Nativity (Focus on the Nativity and Busy Weekend)
7) Felt Nativity Ornament
8) Needle Felted Nativity (Sharing Christmas and Needle Felting)
9) Treble Clef Savior (Hope--First Week of Advent)
10) Gingerbread Graham Cracker Creche (Hope--First Week of Advent)
11) Wooden Nativity Craft (Oriental Trading Christmas Craft Kit Review)
12) Nativity Earrings (Oriental Trading Christmas Craft Kit Review)
13) Colored Wooden Nativity (Operation Christmas)
14) Nativity Story Stones
15) Printable Nativity (Focus on the Nativity and Sharing Saturday with Free Printables)

1) Toddler "Gingerbread" House
2) Valentine's Day Gingerbread House
3) Valentine's Day Gingerbread House
4) Gingerbread Train
5) Christmas Prep 2012
6) Post Christmas Gingerbread House
7) Mortimer's Gingerbread House (Virtual Book Club for Kids: Mortimer's Christmas Manger)

Sharing Saturday 15-50 -- Two Weeks Long!!

Thank you to everyone who shared with us last week!! There were so many wonderful ideas shared!! I had a hard time picking just a few features!! This week's party is going to last for two weeks since next weekend is Christmas and I will be celebrating with my family. Be sure to check back and share again and see some new features!! Our features are just a sampling of the wonderful things shared, so if you haven't checked out the rest you should!! The features for this week include Christmas Math & Science, Christmas Crafts, Holiday Lessons, and a few favorites. I have also started a new craft link party (the crafts just have to be family appropriate and not necessarily kid related) and it is a place to share crafts, reviews of patterns, craft books, etc. and patterns. I hope you will come check it out tomorrow.  Sunday will be the beginning of this month's Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop for all your posts that are culture (multicultural) related!

Themed Play Dates -- Oriental Trading Products Review

Disclosure: I was sent these items to review free of charge from Oriental Trading. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. I am including links to the products for your convenience but do not receive anything if you buy from them.

Perhaps it is my love of planning parties and such, but I love throwing themed play dates for Hazel and her friends and Hazel really enjoys them. This summer we have had or will have three different themed play dates and we used some products from Oriental Trading to make them even more fun. The themes are fairies, mermaids and Bible stories: Creation and Noah's Ark. 

My Hand Is the Sun -- Board Book Review with Handprint Animal Craft Roundup

 

Disclosure: I was sent a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. 

What can you make a handprint into? There are so many possibilities. Today I am sharing a sweet board book that looks at just that. The board book is My Hand Is the Sun by Christine Naumann-Villemin and illustrated by Géraldine Cosneau. It is recommended for ages 2 to 4. I am also sharing a handprint animal craft roundup to go with this adorable book.

Zen Origami Coloring Kit -- a Crafty Weekends Review & Link Party

Disclosure: Tuttle Publishing sent me this kit in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. 

Today I am sharing a fun kit that combines two of our favorite things--coloring and origami!! The kit is Zen Origami Coloring Kit by Nick Robinson. Two relaxing activities combined into one. The kit is no longer available but can be purchased used. 

Black Authors -- #blacklivesmatter Series

 

Today we return to your Black Lives Matter Series. I am working through a list of Black people that some of my Black teacher friends suggested everyone should know. Today I am going to focus on three famous Black authors that my friends added to the list: James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Toni Morrison.

Legend of the Sand Dollar for Easter

Since we are entering Holy Week, I thought I would share a book we

discovered as we were investigating underwater creatures. The book is The Legend of the Sand Dollar: An Inspirational Story of Hope for Easter by Chris Auer. This book is about a young girl, Kerry, who takes a bus with her older sister to a relative's house. Kerry cannot understand why they cannot be with their parents for a few days, but loves going to the relative's house and playing with her cousin, Jack. On the first morning there Jack takes Kerry for a ride in his new boat to an island in the sea. They see sand dollars. Kerry asks what they are and Jack tells her about them and their legend. Now their legend is not a secret. It is all over the internet, but I had not heard it before. Anyway the legend gives Kerry the hope she needs to wait to see her parents again and she shares the story with her sister.