Spring Sharing Contest Winners

We are pleased to announce the winners to the Spring Sharing Contest to celebrate our newly revamped web sharing section!

We had 74 entries submitted during the contest period, and choosing winners from all the great submissions was indeed difficult. We ended up with a single 1st place winner, a 3-way tie for 2nd place, and a 2-way tie for 3rd place! All the winning entries are shown below.

1st Place Winner

Putting on the Whole Armour of God—A Lesson These Boys Won’t Soon Forget!

What began as a Scripture memory achievement exercise (Eph 6:10-18) for our group soon expanded into a project to include the crafting and “putting on” of all the elements of God’s armour!

Our small group of six boys are in the Little Contender and Contender age groups and one 12-year-old young man who serves as an assistant to the adults.  All are the brothers of girls in our Keepers group.

THE BELT OF TRUTH The belt is simply leather grained vinyl.  Since the back on the vinyl was a clothlike material, we were able to fold over the outside edges and secure them the full length of the back with hemming tape.  The material was cut wide enough so that when folded over it is fully enclosed.  The "belt buckles" are cut-outs of foam board, painted and adorned with large cloth  “J” letters.  The belts are all approximately the same length and fitted together at the back joint with stick-on Velcro.  The gold medallions are pieces from a treasure game.

HELMET OF SALVATION  The shells were purchased from a "surplus" store and painted gold.  The crown is the working end of dollar store brooms.  Kerfs were cut in the broom’s base material to provide increased flexibility when bending to fit over the crown of the shell.  The broom’s base material also proved sufficiently substantial to allow for screwing them from inside the shell.

GOSPEL OF PEACE  The "shods" for the feet are cut out of plastic milk cartons and painted metallic.  The tie strings are woven cotton yarn which tend to unravel when cut.  We melted some wax and dipped the ends into it.  When cooled this makes threading through the holes in the shods much easier.

BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, SHIELD OF FAITH AND SWORD OF THE SPIRIT  Our original intent was to design these ourselves and cut them out of foam board.  However we found the dollar store versions of these items to be very attractive and completely acceptable to our purpose.  Adding the lettering on the molded surface of the breastplate and shield proved difficult and unsatisfactory.  To solve this problem we put the lettering on strips of felt first, then placed the strips on the two pieces with spray-on adhesive.  This worked really well.

The pictures attached show most of the detail discussed above, however our first full dress rehearsal is scheduled for this coming Monday, April 5 and additional follow-ups will be forwarded after that.  Our plan is to have the boys dressed in the whole armour and to recite the verses at our awards banquet scheduled for late May.  (Nicholson, GA)

2nd Place Winners

Building A Shed Complete With Electricity and Giving It Away!

One of our dads took on the task of teaching our middle school boy Contenders.  One of the best things our dad did was take a full size shed blueprint and scale it down.  He taught the boys the math in order to do that.  Taking that approach will help those boys to be able to take projects and make them smaller or bigger.  The shed is 4x4' and has a window and a door frame.  If there is time, they plan on putting in glass for the window and hanging a door. 

This final session our dad is completing that carpentry project by having them wire that same shed with electricity.  Once the shed is completed, it is going to be given away in a drawing to one of the boys that helped to build it.  (Tampa, FL)

Learning to be Missionaries Around Town Too!

Our small Keepers at Home group of seven girls in Columbia, SC completed the Missionary skill on February 25, 2010.  We studied David Livingstone, George Muller, and Amy Carmichael.  We made a rather large and detailed Lap Book to go along with the study.  The lap book included a page with information on missionaries and their work, a page on the missionary family in Turkey we adopted for the year, and a page on David Livingstone, George Muller, and Amy Carmichael.  We also sent a large care package to our missionary family in Turkey for Christmas as well as several correspondences throughout the school year.

To complete our skill we made Missionary Bags.  These are small tote bags that included items to help them in being little missionaries around town.  We included a small Bible, sticky notes, pen, pencil, notepad, index cards with Bible scriptures written on them, some money, and tracts.  They will keep the bags in their cars so they can always be ready to witness, minister to, or help anyone they need or want to.  We all had a great time completing this skill.  (Columbia, SC)

Making a Quilt and a Service Project Too!

One of our moms is a gifted quilter, and she naturally wanted to do quilting with our group. We discussed various ways she could approach this skill but nothing seemed quite right for our group. (We have a large spread of both ages and developmental abilities, and have needed to get quite creative in order to make projects work for the whole group. One of the ways we do that is to have a second meeting each month specifically for the older girls, where we go into that month’s skill in greater depth.) Then she called me one day with a great idea. The quilt shop in town annually sponsors a give-away of quilts to those undergoing cancer treatment, and she realized we could combine quilt-making with a service project.

During our main meeting that month, she taught the girls how to use templates, cut pieces, pin, machine stitch, and iron. Each girl made a block to go in the quilt top. (Some needed lots of mom help, but each girl truly did their own block.) Then at the Seniors’ meeting she talked through the options for putting the top together. The four girls settled on an arrangement and selected the contrasting fabric, then cut, pinned, and stitched. By the end of the meeting they proudly displayed the completed quilt top! The younger girls were amazed at the next meeting to see what their individual blocks had become! The instructor-mom did the machine quilting, and wrote the girls’ first names and ages in a corner on the back, so the recipient would know a group of young girls had wanted to be a blessing in a stranger’s hard time.

One of the ways I know this skill was a success is that one of my daughters is now excited about making a quilt for her room, and the instructor-mom is helping her get started. Yay, Keepers! (Elk, WA)

3rd Place Winners

Aquatic Life Provides a Wonderful Unit Study With Projects

SEASHELLS - I realize this is not an individual badge but I thought maybe you could post it under AQUATIC LIFE.

Each club member was given a folder that contained lots of interesting seashell info.  On the first page was the “She sells seashells” tongue twister.  This was just to be silly and to appeal to all age groups.  We said it a few times together for fun.  We  then learned about mollusks and gastropods.

Since different shells are found in different regions, we focused the rest of the meeting on shells found on Sanibel Island in Florida.  The next few pages contained a shell’s name and a description of that shell.  The club members were seated around a long table that was covered in various seashells.  As the description was read everyone was encouraged to search for the appropriate shell.  Inside of everyone’s folder was a small ziploc bag with pictures of shells.  After the actual shell was found, they searched for the coordinating picture in their ziploc bag and attached it to their worksheets with double stick tape.

Then we began craft projects.  Everyone was given a large lunch bag that they wrote their names on.  This was for them to place their completed projects in.

We had learned about sand dollars and their “teeth,” which actually look like doves.  Everyone was given a copy of the “Footprints in the Sand” poem and two sea biscuits.  Sea biscuits are sturdier than sand dollars so they are better to work with.  One was kept whole, and they smashed the other to get the teeth/doves out.  Then they decorated their poem with the doves and whole sand dollar, and placed it in a small plastic box, and chose a ribbon to adorn it.

The next craft was a photo holder.  Everyone was given a small cardboard circle the circumference of a drinking cup.  Then they chose whatever shells they wished from the table, mounded them on the cardboard circle, and then hot glued into place.  Then they broke a wooden skewer into the length they desired, and hot glued the broken end down into the shell mound.  On the end sticking up they hot glued a small clothespin face up and added a final shell at the top and a little raffia for decoration.

All the shells they used were from Sanibel Island.  Since they had completed their folders, they could identify the shells by name that they had chosen for their craft.

Lastly there was another table set up with a sand dollar rubber stamp and the supplies and ideas for everyone to stamp three cards.  (Honeybrook, PA)

Butter Making—A Neat Skill and Tasty Too!

One of our most fun meetings this year was for a skill that doesn’t even have a badge!  One of our moms had a milk cow and decided she wanted to teach the girls butter-making.  As always, we started the meeting with prayer, announcements, awards, and a devotional.  (If you want to know how butter-making can be tied to the Bible, you should have been there. Cow-mom did an awesome job!)  Next we went outside to meet Garnie the cow!  Cow-mom talked about the dairy breeds, explained what is involved in caring for Garnie, and told us what is involved in milking.  Then each girl (and any mom who wanted to) had a chance to milk.  Several of the girls were nervous, but each successfully milked!

Next we went in, washed hands, and strained the milk.  Cow-mom provided cream (from the previous day’s milking) in baby food jars—each also containing a clean marble—and we all started shaking. It took between 10 and 15 minutes of shaking to turn our milk into butter, but how exciting it was for each girl as their butter finally “came”!  As each girl finished, she drew a multiple choice, dairy-related question out of a jar, and then we all worked together to figure out the answer.

Once everyone was finished “churning,” the buttermilk was poured off and collected separately, and then we started cooking!  We were divided into teams of two—one mom (or older girl) and one younger girl—and assigned different tasks.  One pair gathered all the butter together and washed it.  Another team made buttermilk pancakes—yes, with the buttermilk we had just strained off our fresh butter!  One pair whipped cream.  Another pair made buttermilk waffles.  My partner and I sliced frozen strawberries as a topping.  Each mom had been paired with another mom’s daughter—it was fun to work with someone new!  I really enjoyed listening to the hubbub as the different teams tackled their different jobs throughout the kitchen and dining room. Once all the teams were finished we feasted, slathering fresh butter, strawberries, and whipped cream on our pancakes or waffles.

And—just in case you wondered—we used the Cow badge for our successful butter makers, and they were content.  (Elk, Wa)