Making Baby Jesus out of Clay

So, the 8 year-old boy that I'm nannying this summer LOVES to play with his action figures. I was trying to think of a fun arts and crafts activity, so I thought we could make our own action figures out of bake-able clay! When I asked him which super hero he wanted to make, he said, "Can we make Baby Jesus, Mary, and Joseph?" How precious is that? Jesus is his super hero!

He told me that he KNEW how to make them and that he wanted to teach me. So here is 'How To Make Baby Jesus out of Clay' in terms of an 8 year-old!

(He helped me write the directions! How cute!)

1. Buy bake-able clay! You can find it at any arts in crafts store in a variety of colors!

2. Choose skin-color clay and roll it into a ball to make a head.

3. Make a log with any color clay, squish it so it is a little more flat, then poke a hole with your finger in the top that you can put Jesus' head in. Then poke two hole in his face for eyes.

4. Make two little white balls and put them in each eye hole. Then make a black ball and squish it on there for a pupil.

5. Mix together 3 types of brown clay to make a wood texture. Then form the clay into a box to act as a cradle.

6. Roll out little spaghetti strips of yellow clay to make hay for the cradle.

Look! A Baby Jesus in his cradle made out of clay! (And apparently he is on top of the world!)

We then continued on to make a Mary and a Joseph. The above picture is the set that I made, and the one below is the one made by the kid that I'm nannying!

We baked them in the oven at 275 degrees for 30 minutes and placed them on the counter before his mom came home! She was so touched!

Happy Crafting!

How Tue Survive the First Week of Your Spring Semester

I've decided to try a new activity that I'm going to call "How Tue-sday!" (If you don't get it, it's supposed to be like "How To Day!")

How Tue Survive the First Week of Your Spring Semester

1. Learn to love coffee. Any type. Don’t be picky. It runs out quickly around here.
2. Befriend random people at café tables! This might sound intimidating, but trust me on this one. When you need a place to do homework during lunch, there will be no tables available.
3. Do not wait to buy your textbooks the day before class. They will not be available. If you do, accept the fact that you will now have to spend even more money on the already overpriced textbooks for shipping.
4. Bundle up! Be prepared for 10 degree weather (but don’t forget the wind chill)! It feels like 2 degrees.
5. Accept that fact that people will be partying the first week. Expect to wake up at 3 a.m. when all the drunken kids start rolling back in to the dorm. How do you recover from such disrupted sleep? Refer to tip one.
6. Don't forget to bring your goggles and wear closed toed shoes to lab. They WILL drop you from the class and you WILL be behind in your major.
7. Save yourself from embarrassment. Don't sneeze during a lecture of over 300 kids. You will get stared at (especially if you have a high pitched sneeze like me).
8. Learn how to read a syllabus. This is all you do the first week.
9. Be aggressive. If you go to drop/add and see that there is only one spot left in a class that you want, you better type that CRN into your schedule as it is the only thing between you and heaven. Otherwise, forget it.
10. Wear comfortable shoes. Don't underestimate how big campus is. New classrooms mean more walking around trying to find them.

Happy college-ing!