For Christmas I received Volume 7 in the Godly Play series, which has a lesson for one saint each month of the year. I decided that I wanted to make dolls of all 12 saints and tell the stories through the year. We'll see how it goes.
January 28th is the feast day of Thomas Aquinas (we celebrated on sunday the 29th) and I finished up my first doll that day and told (ahem... read) the story of Thomas. Reading about the saints got me really excited about sharing their stories with the boys. My only disappointment is that these lessons (like the enrichment lessons in volume six) are more about talking and setting objects down as you tell the story, as opposed to, telling the story with the objects. With younger children moving the figures and telling a story seems to be more engaging. And, from this storyteller's perspective it is more fun!
You can see the godly play sets to buy for volume seven here. These have wooden cutouts for the figures, but I think having the dolls will be more fun (plus the sets are super expensive!)
We had a good time with our first story and Rowan loves playing with the Thomas doll. The next saint is Valentine and we have a few friends slated to join us, so I'd best start work on doll number two.
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| In this photo you can see some other items used in the story. The ox is because Aquinas was known as the silent ox and he is holding two small books - the Bible and Aristotle. You also use some straw (I used a felt bale I made a while back for Rowan's farm set because I didn't have any real straw around) to represent how Thomas realized at the end of his life that all he had written about was like straw - the most important things to know about God can't be written. |
Crafting Notes: He is made on a 15 cm bendy wood and rope doll like these. I bound his body with some old wool socks to make it rounder (he was a big guy and the doll is really skinny). His tunic and cape are wool and his sash and hair are wool yarn.
6 comments:
Love the doll! will have to find a source for bendy dolls here in the US. I've been using plain wooden peg people to tell my Bible stories, but would like to get around to painting some of them. Good luck with the ambitious doll a month project! Can't wait to see the rest as they develop.
This is a lovely idea. My little guy (who turns 3 soon) became interested in the Joseph story last week and I was wondering about making a Joseph doll. This may be the way to do it. Your Thomas Aquinas is really good.
Valerie
Thanks, he was fun to make. The bendy wooden doll form was fun to use and easy to dress, I would recommend giving it a try. They have a smaller sized doll too and I was thinking of getting a few to make Mary, Joseph, etc for our advent readings about the journey to Bethlehem in "The Light in the Lantern"
I want to make a Joseph doll too now, you could even embroider on his coat of many colors... how fun!
I think if I were doing it again I might make the saints on the smaller dolls too, but I had a couple of the larger dolls and will stick with that now.
Haha, yes I was day dreaming about Joseph's coat too. Sometimes I wonder if the crafts are really for Oscar or really for me lol
Valerie
Love the doll! And love the hair--how did you make it stick to the wooden head? I'm eager to see St. Valentine and all the rest. what an ambitious project with three young boys around!
I'm glad you like him. i'll share st. valentine soon.
I sewed the yarn together, trimmed it and then glued it to the head. It worked surprisingly well.
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