Handmade Holidays: The Next Generation

Cora’s gift for our dog, Thompson

I’ve been blogging about my family’s handmade holidays for a few years now. It’s provided me space to work through my feelings about Christmas as someone who grew up in a conservative Jewish home (see: Cultural Responsiveness Begins at Home, 2012 and Culturally Inappropriate Holiday Crafting, 2013), how to meaningfully engage the teenagers in my life (Holiday Crafting with Teens, 2014), and my relationship with glitter (Holiday Crafting with Preschoolers (and Glitter!), 2014),

As in the past, the days leading up to Christmas this year were filled with crafting activities.

Cora and her buddy Maya made some wrapping paper.

Rosa made some paperwhite planters, at my request. (She also did some of her own crafting in her room leading me to believe she was my secret Santa. Which turns out is exactly what she wanted me to believe, even though she wasn’t my Santa. She said she was trying to mess with me, and get me prepared for a time when she might have to make something for me in secret. She’s a sneaky one…)

Cora had some more fun with glue and glitter,

and I got hooked on Borax snowflakes (which are incredibly difficult to photograph).

Like Rosa, George came up with his own crafting ideas this year. But, unlike his sister, he brought them down into the kitchen to work on with me. His presence was the greatest gift I got. (see Mindfully Foraging Family Time and Holiday Decorations) We spent a solid day and a half together, off and on, as he worked, asked me for advice, and critiqued my holiday music choices (turns out he’s a real traditionalist).

Wood burning a sign for his dad.

Cora loved watching him paint a blue jay for Grandma. I was so glad they had this time together. It doesn’t happen often enough.

After nearly a decade, I feel  certain that the future of our family’s handmade holidays is secure. And with that, I wish you and yours a Happy and a Crafty New Year.

Mindfully Foraging Family Time and Holiday Decorations

It’s no secret to those who know me well that I’ve been struggling to connect with the teenagers in my life as of late. I’m about one month into some new experiments, guided in part by The Happiness Project, by which I’m making more fervent attempts to engage them. You might read this as “force them to spend time with me.” That’s basically what it is, but I’m trying my best to prevent them from seeing it that way. (I guess it’s good neither of them actively follow this blog…)

Two weeks ago, they each got to cook dinner with me one night. They decided what we would make and I tried to get be a guide on the side, rather than the master chef. It was good time together, something Rosa and I have done a lot of (see My Step Monster’s Kitchen), just not lately. For George, it seems like a lot of our interactions come down to, “in two years this is all going to be your responsibility,” so you might call this college (or life) prep in the kitchen.

Thanksgiving day I went out in the garden to gather some herbs. I came in with a fistful of sage, rosemary, time, and parsley. I went around the house with it inviting everyone to take a few deep cleansing breaths. Cora wanted to go out and find more and I suggested we gather some greens and things to decorate the table. Then I thought, we should all go. It was unseasonably warm – thankfully – so it didn’t take too much convincing when I gave Dan and the big kids thirty minutes to get ready for a family walk.

We wandered around the neighborhood for nearly an hour chatting, playing, singing, and foraging. We gathered dried blossoms and branches, berries, and evergreen boughs, pine cones and nuts and came home with an overflowing basket of materials to work with.

I decided not to do anything with them right away. Instead, we waited for Dan’s mom to arrive. She is a florist so I solicited her to work on arrangements. Rosa helped and it was lovely to see this activity turn intergenerational.

The finished product was beautiful from every seat at the table, complete with the kitcschy Pilgrims and Native Americans my mother-in-law used to use at her house. We also included a beeswax candle Rosa and I made last year at Christmas-time. (That was part of another one of my concerted efforts to spend time with the teens which I documented in “Holiday Crafting with Teens.”)

Just after Thanksgiving the latest edition of Rodale’s Organic Life came to the house complete with an article on foraged holiday crafts and decorations. And just like that, I had ideas for next time.

 

RE:Thinking Drawings

Quick follow-up to last week’s post about the thinking drawings of young children.

Cora and I flew home from visiting family this morning. It was raining as we took off and climbed through the clouds and we talked about what that might look like – a plane flying over a cloud filled sky with rain falling down below. I told her I thought it would be a great thing to draw. Her response, “But mommy, I don’t know how to draw a plane.”

I reached into the seat back in front of us and pulled out the safety card. Together, we looked at the photo of a plane on the cover and the diagrams inside. The conversation dissolved into a discussion of the pictographs used to tell passengers what to do in an emergency. I love to deconstruct international symbol systems so I as happy to follow the tangent.

After a few hours of screen time – I graded papers while she played with nearly every app loaded on our iPad – it was landing time. She asked for some paper and markers and started scribbling. After a quick self-portrait, she asked for help drawing a plane. I suggested she start with a large oval – like a hot dog and she was off.

She drew one end rounded and other ended up pointed to which she said, “Oops,” and looked up at me. I told her I thought it looked great that way since the nose of a plane is usually rounded and the tail pointed. Satisfied, she added a few tail fins, then wings, windows, and finally a logo on the wing. And just like that, she made one of her greatest thinking drawing yet. Right in front of me. I was mesmerized.

At one point she pulled the safety card out again to check some details, but quickly put it back down and drew the parts as she imagined them in her mind’s eye: from her time looking out airport windows in the past, from her Playmobil toy plane, and from our earlier discussion and study of the illustrations.

If you’re as amazed by this process as I am, and you are interested in helping children improve their observational drawing skills by talking about the world they see around them, I recommend Observation Drawing with Children by Nancy Smith and the Drawing Study Group (1997, Teachers College Press). I think I’ve mentioned it before. I’m sure I’ll mention it again.