A Little Holiday Crafting

We have been working away on our regular lessons this week. T has been enjoying learning about prehistoric humans along with the other prehistoric life from the second and third Great Lessons. Lots of math and grammar too!

Today I decided to focus a little on my younger child B. B is almost 2 years old and rarely participates in our classroom. I have a few lessons for her but she usually does them only when being supervised because she is very into destruction at the moment.

Last week, we picked up a crate of small mandarin oranges at the store on B's insistence. She has been enjoying them for her snack and lunch but T didn't really like them. We had several pounds of these oranges to eat and B and I were the only ones eating them. I remembered seeing this beautiful holiday craft at Munchkins & Moms, and I thought it would be a great way to use up those oranges before they went bad.

B is just under 2 but she is fairly coordinated. One of her favorite activities is standing up miniature animals in rows. I thought she would enjoy this craft.

You only need oranges and whole cloves.

Take a whole clove and poke the pointed end through the skin of the orange. You can make any pattern you like.

T made a person on one side (its upside down in this pic)

I cut B's orange in half as suggested in the link above. It really helped but I cut it the wrong direction so it wasn't divided like suggested. She still had fun but she mainly lined all her cloves down the center of the orange.

B's Pomander half

T's Pomander ball

My Pomander ball

B kept trying to eat her orange. Once she finished her half she got to eat the other half. She then insisted on another half so I had to open another for her and eat the remaining half myself. It was quite tasty.

Once we finished and let them sit a while I wrapped some yarn around the two whole balls and hung them on the tree with ornament hooks.

The look beautiful and smell amazing!