Class cards

A couple of ideas for if you want a group of children to make a card for someone. Particularly if you don't have loads of time, and need something that will be simple and effective.

In both cases, I used a sheet of A3 card folded in half, to make an A4 card.

Idea 1:

This one was a goodbye card for a Sunday School teacher.

• Beforehand: Cut a selection of 4½ cm squares in four colours. This is especially easy if you use a guillotine, but it's not neccessary. 
• With the children: Each child draws whatever they like - aliens were popular in my class, as well as some less conventional objects (a sock?!?). 
• Stick them on, starting from the bottom. I did it in order of the colours, also trying to ensure there weren't too many similar drawings together.
• As it is impossible to fit a whole number of squares on an A4 sheet, leave a space for the name or a greeting.

I have done a similar one as a wedding card (can't find a photo). In that case, I got them all to draw one or more hearts on the squares.


Idea 2:

This one definitely suits a short name.

• Beforehand: Print out the letters as outlines. The font I used was Roger*, but you could use anything chunky, or draw bubble letters. Cut paper apart with one letter to a piece (but don't cut the letters out).
• Cut up lots of little squares of tissue paper. Pile the paper up and cut through several layers at once. About 2cm square is good - and they don't need to be very neat.
• With the children: Children stick the tissue paper on the letters. It should overlap the lines a little.
• Cut them out. We had the adults doing this: one with scissors, the other did the holes with a craft knife. Older kids could do the scissor cutting themselves, but many 5-6 year olds don't cut neat enough for the letters to be legible!
• Stick them on (preferably better placed than I did) and add stickers if there's time.

Tips:

• It really pays to be well organised, so you know exactly what you're aiming at. 
• Have spare squares or letters, in case someone makes a mess/loses one etc. Keep the spares separate, though, so they're not used unless needed. You don't want to have too many squares to fit!
• Have enough squares or letters to cater for newcomers or visitors (if your group is likely to have them). That's why I spelled out "Baby Sophie", not just "Sophie". This will also be helpful if some children are quicker than others - they can do several.
• Do the actual sticking yourself, or it will be chaos. But if you have time, you can call the group together and get them to help: "First I need the 'B' - who's got the 'B'? What letter will I need next?" etc.

*The 'y' is not actually from Roger, as I don't like the one from it. So I made one from an upside-down 'h' and the tail of a 'g'. But if you are a normal sensible person you don't have to do that.

Window washing

Somehow it had never occurred to me that they actually wash the roof of Central Station.

In case it's not very clear, they're using a brush thing on a long handle which is attached to a hose, with water going through it.

Image Libraries

Just found my picture on another image library. This one seems far more legit - it has contact info, and legal stuff about copyright. However, my picture is on it completely illegally. This may not be the fault of the site owners of course.

Many people assume the internet is a copyright-free zone; it's not. Many people assume that everything on the internet is public domain; most of it isn't. Just because someone says 'this is free, you can have it' doesn't mean they have any right to give you it.

Copyright

I've just spent over 5 hours going through my blog putting a copyright notice on each picture.

After reading this post, I thought I'd just check the internet for a few of my pictures. I did a reverse image search on my 12 disciples picture (as that's by far the most popular page on this blog) - and I discovered it was on some image libraries.

I'm fine with people downloading the picture for personal use - but I want them to do it from my blog, not a random image library. And certainly not a dodgy image library which brings up loads of popup ads and which my virus scanner warns me has threats on it!

I've probably overdone it now (I can't see why anyone would want to steal some of the pictures!). But you can't be too careful.

A verse I like

We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you. 

 2 Chronicles 20:12

New look

I was wanting a change from the previous template, so here we are. May do more adaptions.
I like how the posts are separated from each other, and white backgrounds are a nice change.
I have been working on a really complicated header, but as I've been doing it for over a year I thin k I won't bother waiting till it's done...

Therefore

If you want to type a therefore sign ∴ , hold down alt and type 8756 on the numeric keypad.
(Except it doesn't seem to work in blogger, and I had to copy paste it)