Art Fair

Julia and Dave's student Alfred

We've been up to a good deal lately. At school we've been hosting a Art Fair, with kids from 3 other schools coming in for two days of crafty fun. Projects include heartstrings from toilet paper tubes, sewing native kuspuk shirts and bean and lavender filled neck warming pillows, beading, knitting and crocheting, picture frames with images drawn on pop cans, wood burning, and totems.
I'm leading the heartstring craft. I got the idea from Family Fun magazine, and made a couple strings for valentine's day. It seemed like a great idea for the kids, and they are making some pretty neat strands.
Here's the link to the tutorial:
Heartstring craft

Students working on their heartstrings

bean pillows

woodburning

tin-drawn photos in frames

totems

felt wall hangings

sewing kuspuks for babies!

Julia has acquired the skill of telling me that it is time to go outside. She goes to the coat tote, pulls out her coat and brings it to me, then walks over to the door and bangs on it while looking at me pointedly. Now that she can do this, she requests to go out about 3 times a day. So we do, and I let her play in the mud that is everywhere thanks to the lovely 50's we've been having this week! This makes for a lot more laundry, but a happy baby is a happy baby. Along with the warm weather has been extended daylight. It doesn't get truly dark until about 11 pm now and who knows when it gets light. I'm definitely not awake for it! All the talk has turned to break up, the event of the ice breaking up off the river. This can be a quiet, relatively slow process or it can be a flood-induced crashing drama. There are signs warning that the historical flood level is maybe 20 feet higher than the river usually lies, and that explains why our house is 10 feet off the ground. It's been many many years since the flooding has been that bad, but that just means that we're probably due!

mud 4 sale cheep!

There's a river of water forming on top of the ice. 

The little sign around 9 feet says flood level, the upper suggests building elevation.
Unfortunately, few houses seem to be this high. This post is about 10-20 feet higher than the river itself

Julia has also learned to ask for nursing and for water in sign. The nurse sign is to tap two fingers against one wrist, and she mostly taps one palm with the other. for water, I sign to her with three fingers tapping against my chin. she has interpreted this as a open palm smack to her head. She's also made the discovery that pens and crayons make marks on paper. She gasped when she realized her power!

Earlier this week, I tried Quilling with the school kids. We used plastic coffee stirrers for a quilling tool. Just split the end with a scissor and away you go. It was quite successful. They were all able to get the idea of how to quill up a loose circle and to form it into a tear drop or a square or what have you, and they put their quilled shapes together into pictures.

The village has also started hosting a knitting/crocheting/beading night at the council office twice a week. I'm the one who was called upon to teach the knitting aspect, and to my great surprise, the young girls really took to it. Ashley in particular really got it quickly, whipping out a small scarf and starting on a baby blanket.