Gnomes

I had a 50% off coupon for our local craft store, so I decided to try my hand at a word burning tool.  I have never been a great artist and I do not have a steady hand but the tool ended up costing $8.  I figured I would have a go at it.  

I found it a bit hard to work with, and my designs came out um....primitive shall we say?  But I had fun and I think the gnomes came out really cute. 

First, I burned the designs, then water colored their bodies, and then sealed them with beeswax before gluing on their acorn or felt hats.  I think these will make sweet little Valentine's Day gifts for the children in our Playgarden and will provide some good practice for me.  I also listed them in my Etsy shop almost at cost, to reflect that these are practice gnomes, but I think I made them affordable enough that someone could actually hand these out instead of paper Valentines.  If you are interested I am selling the acorn capped gnomes for .75 cents each to my Blog readers and Facebook friends, when you purchase 20 or more.  Just send me a message on Etsy.

I also made a set of weather gnomes, that I had planned on using with our weather verse.  When the little ones wake up we go to the front door to see what the weather is today, We say this little verse from Little Acorn Learning,

Good morning to the glad new day, Whatever the skies let fall, If storm or sunshine, it is sent, A loving gift to all. For Sunshine: Good morning to the sunshine fair, That lights this world of ours, Good morning to the singing birds, Good morning to the flowers! For Clouds or Rain: Good-morning to the friendly clouds That bring refreshing rain, Which patters out "Good-morning, dears!' Against the window pane. For Snow: Good-morning to the lovely snow, That lies so soft and deep Above the little tender seeds In mother earth asleep. And then I showed them the gnomes and told them about their symbols.  They were both able to pick out which one was rain.  Although I'm not sure if they really understood the symbols on the gnomes yet, we will have to see how it shows up in their play over the next few days.  I often don't realize how much they understand until I see them imitate it later. I don't know if they can make the connection with the sun in the sky and the little sunshine symbol on the gnome yet, and they have not seen snow since before they turned one, so I don't think that is a clear concept for them yet either, but rain, we know rain!   Kiera was not interested in putting our little rain gnome on the nature table after we determined today too was raining. We have had our fair share of rain this week!   She cleared off her little table and grabbed the wand we use for story time and went to creating a little story with our new little weather gnomes.