Yay for Advent! We made a big London Landmarks Advent Calendar which we hung with pride of place in the lounge ...
I put some treats inside 'Day 1' which was 'Big Ben'...
This was a big project as it turned out. I'd had the idea from Gail Bartel's blog here but I wanted an educational slant on the project (you know me). We began with online research last week, choosing 25 famous London landmarks which we wanted to put on our Advent calendar. Then we gathered up 25 small boxes (different shapes). We used a couple of tourist picture maps to help place the boxes on the backing paper, (very!) roughly in the right place. They chose a maltesers box to be Buckingham Palace and located it fairly central on the paper...
...adding more and more boxes to be the different landmarks..... then, once all 25 boxes were on the paper, they drew around each one and labelled it...
(at this point somebody actually labelled a landmark 'Nelson's COLON' by mistake...heehee)
Each box was painted with gesso...
I showed the children how to use photoshop PSE5 to size the different photos that they'd chosen to fit the different boxes. This took a while. Then the photos of the landmarks were cut out and laid on the corresponding boxes and there was a bit more final fiddling...
Then the background was painted...
...and the photos were stuck onto the boxes as 'flaps' so that the flap could be lifted to reveal the treats.
Each box was glued firmly down...
The flaps turned out to be a bit too flappy and had to be blu-tak shut. Then they took turns adding numbers and a title with stickers...
We were all pretty proud of our Advent Calendar (and yep it was educational too!) There is a fairly huge splash of artistic interpretation on the placement of these landmarks...oh & the keen eyed folks among you may notice 'The Tate Modern' in place of 'The Tate Gallery'. That's because we've been to 'The Tate Modern' and loved it and wanted it on the calendar but stricktly speaking it's off too far right-ish. but we're OK with that.
The magnetic Advent Calendar that I made was a hit too. I put all the little squares on the fridge...
...to be transferred each day to the baking tray in the lounge...
This will be our fourth Christmas here. Yay
This looks great guys. Terrific!! We love Christmas so much. Mandy you're magnetic calendar is fantastic. You are so talented.
We love reading your blog and looking at your pics.
Simone and Family.
Posted by: simone | December 02, 2009 at 07:40 AM
Looking forward to seeing this in real life so to speak. No doubt all the treats will be gone!Love xxx
Posted by: Maz | December 04, 2009 at 05:16 PM
Hey Mandy this looks incredible! What an amibitous project and I love how the kids were involved every step of the way.
You guys are amazing.
Posted by: Gail Bartel | December 06, 2009 at 07:15 PM
Oh, this is amazing :-) I'm sorry it's taken me so long to return your blog visit! But I've been looking forward to seeing the calendars you mentioned, and oh boy - they were worth waiting for :-)
Posted by: Mel | December 11, 2009 at 02:25 PM