Day 6 of Christmas Crafting: Christmas Spheres

First, let me say thank goodness for my new phone. I was a long-time smart phone hold-out, but when our laptop suddenly broke today I was mighty glad I had finally gotten one! I'd like to say I was not the one who broke the lap top, but between Patrick and I, I am certainly the more negligent one with electronics. The only thing I have going for me is that Claire is about a thousand times harder on them than me, and she loves the laptop. Hopefully what broke is a quick fix (Patrick is at the genius bar now trying to work it out), but in the meantime I am happily blogging on my phone. :)

On a happier note, watching Claire as she saw our tree for the first time this morning was awesome. She woke up super early (I'm clinging to the thought that that had more to do with her cold than the tree), and so Patrick got to be there for it, too. It is such a joy experiencing all these firsts as a family! Ok, so technically this is Claire's second Christmas tree, but this is the first time she's old enough to really get it and be into it.

I was super proud of her, too. After I carried her into the living room to see it, Patrick held her up and she demonstrated repeatedly her newly-mastered one-finger touch skills. She touched the tree, and the ornaments, and the lights with one finger, all while saying "Wow" and gasping with delight.

I couldn't have been more pleased, or more proud. Which meant I let my guard down. Wop wop. Yep, not 20 minutes later I left the room to put something away, and she toddled in after me with FOUR ornaments in hand! My girl's a collector.

Sigh. The rest of the day progressed a bit Jekyll & Hyde-like. One minute Claire was sweetly pointing at things on the tree and touching with only one finger. This earned her lots of praise. The next minute she was racing away, ornament in hand, while I said (ineffectively) "No, no, Claire, that's not for you!" When I finally caught her-- she's wicked fast when absconding with stolen goods-- she'd grip said ornament super tight while doing her best Incredible Hulk impression. Obviously it's still a work in progress, but I have faith we'll get there. And if not, there's always next year, right?!?

Anywho, on to today's craft. Today I decided to do a Christmas spin on a Start-of-the-Year craft I always did with my students. It's one of my all-time favorite get-to-know-ya activities to do with 6th graders. We called them "Personality Spheres" after The Mailbox article (from Aug. 2005) we got the idea from. Basically, kids have to answer 20 questions about themselves and put each answer onto a circle of paper. We then decorated the circles, folded them, and glued them together to make a sphere. (I know I have a picture of mine somewhere, if I find it, I'll post it.)

My Christmas Sphere used the same assembly technique, but I used printed scrapbook paper for the circles.  I found a great tutorial online for you, it's here if you like to make a sphere if your own.

I chose two coordinating patterns for my sphere.  On my next one I will use more patterns together so that I can alternate patterns better, but I like this one, too.

Here's a view from the top.

And for a feel of the size of this, here it is next to one of the Paper Ornaments from Day 2.

For this project I used 2 12x12 pieces of scrapbook paper, scissors, a template for the circles (found here), and Scotch Quick-Dry Adhesive (In my opinion, the best for projects where you have to glue lots of paper together quickly).

Any fellow teachers out there that have their students make Personality Spheres?  Anyone else make Geodesic paper spheres for something else?  They're mighty cool, if you ask me. :)