The Never-ending Christmas Project

I believe those were the exact words Anna's teacher said to me at one point this morning. Today I did the last art lesson for 2007 for Anna's class. They needed to finish the fabric weaving project we started last time and get it sewn together (hand sewed with whip stitch). As I knew they would all be at different places in the project and I didn't have enough needles for many to be sewing at the same time (and I knew they would need lots of help showing how to do the sewing), I had two simple ornament projects they could work on if they weren't doing the other. Well, I thought they were simple enough to do on their own. I spent lots of time getting paper and wires cut and beads and brads gathered with instructions written and photocopied beforehand. But it just didn't work out.

Some kids were getting frustrated with the sewing and I had to keep helping them and then the other kids needed help with the ornaments or couldn't get the paper punch through all their papers, needed help with the wires, and so on and so on. I can only help one person at a time and I try to get to them in the order they approach me, but sometimes its hard to keep track because there are so many. So I was there from the beginning of school until lunch time around noon. I offered to sew a couple of the boys projects together since it was late and they didn't want to do it anyway. I finished a few others who were getting frustrated or too distracted to concentrate. The teacher was great and said we could have the extra time and it was fine with her. In the end, everyone's project was sewn. I have no idea how the ornaments turned out because I was too busy to notice. I hope some of them made something they liked.

Then I came home exhausted and down because I see it as a failure on my part. I think either I under/over-estimated their ability to accomplish the project or I didn't do a good enough job explaining/demonstrating so they could get it. So I try to tell myself that I put a lot of prep time into these projects to have something fun for the kids to do that they might be able to give as a gift and my heart was in the right place even if the execution wasn't so great. (I don't know if that really makes me feel better).

Anyway, on a brighter note, it was nice to come home from the busy morning to find this lovely fabric postcard from Beate in Germany in my mailbox. I guess I need a little peace, love and joy today.