Geodesic Fun

In the advent calendar yesterday the note said to make a Christmas craft together. So, I grabbed the bazillion circles I punched out of old Christmas cards and got ready for a little holiday ornament fun.

From 2002 until last year I have collected and kept every Christmas card we received. This year I decided it was time to purge. I pulled out some significant cards and pictures and left the remaining cards for punching 2" and 3" circles. In the back of my mind I had the idea to make an ornament with the circles. When I was teaching 5th grade my team teacher and I made some geodesic ornaments using 20 circles with the students. They were cool. I decided this might be a fun activity to do with the girls. I also thought that my mom would have loved this idea.

The process is this:

• Cut out 20 circles (2" or 3" work great)
• Fold three (3) flaps on the circle to form an equilateral triangle in the center of the circle
• Now take 5 folded circles and adhere with glue or staple together in a circle
• Repeat this step with another 5 folded circles
• Take the remaining 10 folded circles and staple them together in a line
• These will now form a nice circle and you will staple them together
• Now put the first circle on top and staple and then the second circle (group of 5) and staple to the bottom
• We added glue to the edges and put inside a ziploc bag with glitter
• Shake
• Let it sit in there for a bit to dry
• Punch a hole in the ornament and thread a ribbon or piece of thread through the hole to hang on the tree.

A little note here---for younger children, trace an equilateral triangle on to a card and cut out. Then let them use this as a template to trace the triangle on to the circle. From there, they can fold along the lines they have traced. Lily was able to do the folding without using a template, but it helped Shelly to follow this as a guide.