French knitting

Ruth got a lovely book from the correspondence school with loads of sewing and knitting ideas. I hunted out my old French knitting tool and she was so excited to get started.

She got so much done in just one day.

Elephant puppet

Ruth did such a good job sewing her elephant puppet last week. Today she stuck on all the bits and it looks great.

Christmas presents

Ruth has really enjoyed making Christmas presents for her sisters this year. First we made the teddy "bean bag" for Hannah. Ruth was given one of these for her birthday and so we used that as the idea for Hannah's. I did not get photo through the process but Ruth really enjoyed sitting on my lap and doing the sewing. We sewed all the pieces on with the machine and she would sit and push the button to make the needle go up and down and also lift the foot when we needed to shift the material. We had so much fun with it.

We decided to go for a cat for Rachel (who loves cats). So I found a pattern on line and Ruth cut that out. I transferred the lines onto the material and then Ruth helped me sew the picture onto the material.

We sewed the two pieces together (the wrong way around) and then Ruth turned it the right way around (hiding all the stitching inside).

Fill with wheat and stitch closed.

Rachel and Hannah were thrilled with their presents.

Christmas decorations

Placing the pieces right side together and pinning.

Ruth was really excited about the sewing project we started. Julia had given us this lovely material and the idea of Christmas decorations and Ruth learnt so much through this project.

Working carefully with pins. She did a good job.

Rachel did the sewing on the machine and Ruth helped
me over lock the edges.

Ruth had tacked a few of them together
and so she took that sticking out now.

Then the tricky part - turning them the right way around.

Getting her fingers into the corners.

Then stuffing them.

Some red ribbon to hang them by.

Rachel sewed them closed on the machine.

They look lovely. This is the front.

And pretty bright colours on the back.



Helping Rachel wrap the present. This one is for
their ballet teacher.







To do list

Ruth wanted to have the same type of "to do list" as Rachel had - so I got hers done last week. Rachel's are on the top and Ruth's on the bottom (where she can reach them).

Her "Art" this week. A picture
for Dad. She also ended up with
lots of stickers on herself. :-)

It was lovely to see how this week she took over the job of doing the chooks from Rachel (the red lables). She takes them any scraps, fetches the eggs and checks that they have enough food. She is such a big girl already.

Other items on her list are "Tell" when she tells me about the story that Rachel has read to her, "Music" for violin practice, "Computer" - a friend lent us a couple of new games so she is enjoying those and learning a lot. And then she has some items that are not for everyday. I have made enough for every day but for starters we are going to have it our goal to get to them at least once a week. "Baking", "Art", "Read" - at this stage it's just work on the alphabet, "Math" - at this stage just work on recognising the numbers or doing some counting or adding, "Sew" - she loves sewing and I want to try and get her something to do every week and "Clean" - it's nice for her to have a record of packing up or cleaning that she has done.

A real needle

Last week Ruth started on another felt puppet. The first one was a set that I had with the puppet already cut out and the wholes made for them to stitch with a plastic "needle". I don't have a punch that can make holes in felt though - so I decided to just let her learn to use a real needle. She was thrilled to be sewing properly and did a really good job. I just drew some dots for her to follow.

Today she finished up the decoration on her fish. She is getting much better at using glue on her own and just loves her "creative art". I had copied the idea of the shape of the fish from the other puppet's instructions and Ruth wanted to just copy the design they had done (thinking that was the right way to do it). It was good to get her to do her own thing and not feel it had to be a certain way.

It looks great Ruth.