Buddies ~ christmas gnomes

***In September 2011 6 families got together and started Buddies Home School. Each week we meet in each other's home and follow a simple rhythm: movement and music, craft/ baking, snack time, free play and story time. Each part of the session is led by a different family. We are sharing this week's session with you here...***

This week at Buddies we continued with our winter/ Christmas theme. We sang a couple of Christmas songs for music and movement and then moved on to our craft making little scented gnomes to hang on our Christmas trees:

 First the Buddies sewed a little triangle of green felt, oh so carefully to make a pointed gnome cap.

 Then we placed some lovely Chrismassy scents into a circle of red cotton: star anise, cinnamon and cloves.

 We added some sheep's wool stuffing to this to fill out the bellies then wrapped some yarn around the top to secure.

 Using the long tail of the yarn we strung a pink painted bead on top of the belly and then threaded this through the cap.

 We drew on simple faces with felt tip pen and secured the cap and a wee beard (if desired) with a dab of glue.

 They are very cute and smell just lovely :-)

Buddies had 2 grannies present this week, perhaps it was their influence but free play was so calm and quiet this week...

 Bubs (my mum) reading a story

 Benny and Little O played in the play kitchen together for a long time

 Little L and her brother Little Mr teapot took turns pushing each other around and around the kitchen in the car.
 And while all the older Buddies were engaged in this peaceful and happy play, little A was delighted to find that she had the snack table all to herself....

(not for long though).

Roisin ended our session reading Little Miss Christmas to us which everyone enjoyed...

Perhaps we should always have grannies at Buddies ;-P