Faith, Art and Bathtub Toys

A little more of what we've been doing:

To celebrate the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross
(see The Catholic Encyclopedia, Catholic Culture, and Women for Faith and Family), we made these Salvadoran Crosses:

This was another great idea from Ann Ball's Catholic Traditions in the Home and Classroom.

And, just to encourage you, in case you have grand plans for art projects that never come to fruition ... if I had waited until I was prepared to execute this project exactly as described in the book, we'd still be waiting and would wait well into the year 2008.

The original project calls for making wooden crosses from 1" x 2" boards. I knew I wouldn't do that. I just wouldn't. So, I looked for wooden crosses at the craft store. Didn't find any. I decided to do the big cheat. Our crosses were made from white fun foam sheets, which I did find at the craft store. We cut out the crosses and I freehanded the design onto each one (though you could enlarge and copy the patterns from the book, using carbon paper, which is what Ann Ball suggests, or you could come up with your own designs.)

After reading about the Feast of the Exaltation (or Triumph) of the Cross, we colored our crosses, and looked at a few websites with examples of other Salvadoran crosses and folk art, such as this, this, this, this, and this one.

A fun and educational time was had by all, and I didn't go near a hammer or a nail.

And, while we're on the subject of crafts made from fun foam, for the easiest bathtub toys ever, cut out shapes and letters from the stuff. Ramona loves these: