Sunday, October 10, 2010

Creation bean bags

      We have been doing a lot of fun activities around the Creation Story lately and to make it more concrete and visual, I made up a set of six Creation Bean Bags that we have been using in many exciting ways!



   To make the pouches, I cut strips of blue felt a little wider than our bean bags, and sewed the sides closed, leaving a little flap at the back, to which I sewed a plastic press-stud. The pictures were glued down with fabric glue and left to dry under a stack of heavy phone directories overnight.


    I used some of the heavy duty bean bags that I sell. They are made from sturdy bull denim, and filled with PVC pellets instead of real beans. This means they can be washed in a normal washing machine (a great benefit if you have children like mine who seem to learn about their world primarily through their sense of taste!!). Also, beans and lentils can get moldy - no such problem with the plastic pellets!




   So I just slip the bean bags into their felt pouches for the duration of our Creation 'theme', and can then put them away until later ( I will store them with our felt board themes - you can click here to see how I keep our felt themes together in a tidy, 'compact' way!)

Here are close-ups of the bean bags for each day:

(CANNOT. GET. PHOTOS. TO. UPLOAD. CORRECTLY. 
 I appologise for the pictures that are on their sides. I have tried and tried to get them right side up, but to no avail.)







    
    



GAME IDEAS:

1. We played a silly bean bag toss game while we listened to the song God made the Universe from our The Singing Bible CD - more about this in another post later this week.

2. Make a masking tape grid with six squares on the living room floor. Place paper plates that are numbered 1 to 6 in each square. Place the bean bags in a line at your child's feet. As you call out the number of the day, she must pick the correct square and toss the bag onto the plate in that square!

3. On the first morning that we used these, I presented them in a 'lesson' similar to the Montessori Godly Play style. Click here for a video that shows how to go about this.

*Please note: you could also make a seventh bag with nothing on it to show that God rested on the seventh day. I only had six bean bags, so whenever we spoke about the seventh day, we would stretch out dramatically and say: "On day Seven, God rested in Heaven!" *



I also linked this post to Se7en's Friday Link Up and




14 comments:

  1. I really like these we've started out bible abc this week Aa for Angels :) I might have to make some for Cc week

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  2. Oh Thanks for linking!!! Your bean bags are just beautiful!!! Have a fun week!!!

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  3. Thanks for sharing! We just did the creation days, too! I talked briefly about it on a recent post: http://momistheonlygirl.blogspot.com/2010/10/days-of-creation-with-little-ones.html
    Your bean bags are great, very nice to look at - you should add them to your store offerings!

    -Tricia at Mom is the Only Girl

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  4. I'm not a Christian, but these look really well made!

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  5. I love these! What a great idea to make them slip over existing bean bags. Since I don't sew or cut felt--lol, I would buy them.

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  6. These are adorable! I'll be starting a Creation unit with my kindergartner in the spring, and these would work perfectly!!

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  7. I love these! Great idea. So simple and effective

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  8. We have just been talking about creation in my Sunday school class. The two year olds would love these.

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  9. I love the idea of creating a pocket and inserting your everyday beanbags into them, that is really very clever.

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  10. Ok, I'm not very knowledgeable about bean bags, I guess. So, the blue part is a pocket and you can actually wash the red "bean" bag in the washer? That sounds cool.

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  11. Thanks so much for all the comments! Jackie H, yes, the actual bean bags are the red, yellow, green and dark blue ones you can see peeping out of the felt pockets. They are part of the range of educational toys that I sell. They are really sturdy and my children love playing with them. But because I try to keep things 'fresh' and interesting, I decided to create the pockets - it allows me to use the bean bags in a way that will suit whichever theme we are exploring at the moment, and adds a bit of fresh sensory interest to a toy they already know well!

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  12. Hi I have a question about how you did the embellishment on the bean bags - did you just glue them on? you didn't need to sew them? thanks !

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  13. Hi there SewCreative - yes I used fabric glue. They are nearly two years old now and none of the pieces have come loose. Hope that helps?

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  14. Yes, sorry I went back and reread that :-) I am making mine today, thanks so much for the fabulous idea !

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