Box-o’-apostles
Mar 15th, 2007 by lapazfarm
Well, I have been busily gathering and working on materials to begin Catechesis of the Good Shepherd presentations. For those who do not know, CGS is a Catholic catechism method based on Montesssori “hands-on” principles. I will begin using Moira Farrel’s wonderful albums as a basis for JBug’s and Squirt’s catechesis this year.
Dh was kind enough to make a lovely mini home altar for our work. Here it is all dressed up according to the first presentation:
Here are the materials for the first and second presentations in a wonderful wooden tray I bought at Michaels craft store. The mini altar materials are from Our Father’s House. 
Here is a box of Apostle figures , plus Our Lord and Our lady (and Matthias, who replaced Judas). I made them for the Last Supper presentation (thanks to Tracy for the inspiration on these!) and am sure they will be used for many other presentations as well:
Here is St. Peter up close, standing:
Jesus and Our Lady:
And here you can see that underneath I have glued cream-colored cardstock with symbols for each Apostle on the base, and if you lift the robes a little, you can see the name of the Apostle:
I am hoping that we will learn their symbols this way, and since the symbols tell us so much about their lives, we will learn even more about the lives of these great saints. I am still debating about putting facial features on them. I think I will leave them blank, because they will be more versatile that way. For instance if I put a smile on Our Lady it would work for the infancy narratives, but not so well for the crucifixion, kwim? I know it is kind of “Waldorf-y” to leave them blank, but I think the Waldorf schools may have the right idea in letting children use their imaginations for the facial expressions.
Any thoughts on that?
Wonderful, wonderful!!!
Theresa, I never tire looking at the wonderful you and your children create. They are just works of art! These are no different–gorgeous!
Really lovely!
What are the heads made out of and how are they attached? Oh, and I do like the Waldorf-y faces!
Thanks!
I got clothespins that are the kind you can make dolls from, and added “clothespin doll bases” and “clothespin doll heads” which just slip on over the ends of the clothespins. Then I glued them on so they would stay better. Clothes are of felt, with chenile arms and yarn belts. All of the supplies were from Michaels and were very inexpensive.
I really like these! I need to get busy and make some. Thanks for the inspiration.
All of your materials look great. I like the idea of using a tray from Michael’s to hold them. I personally like no faces. I asked my kids and 2 of them said they’d prefer faces and one said he liked no faces. To make his point he brought out one of my Willow Tree figures and said, “These look good without faces.” I had never really thought of them as faceless.
They turned out great. I really like that you added the symbols on the bottom – very cool.
Theresa — these are so cool!! I’m so glad you posted the pictures. I actually bought supplies from the last discussion, but hadn’t started, and wasn’t sure how to do it…. I like these much better than the worship woodworks because you can identify the person!!
We are starting this also. I love your dolls. I prefer no faces, they are beautiful, what a treasure they will always be.
These are so so good…now I am wondering if I have time to make them before Holy week. Thanks for posting such clear pictures. And I love the idea of the symbols great!
These are wonderful, aagh, more stuff to make!! I’m so glad you paved the way so I can refer back to your pics, great job and thanks so much for sharing them, what a rich learning environment for your kiddos!! Hugs!
Truly fabulous!!!
They look great, Theresa. I love the idea of putting the symbols on the bottom. Now I have a visual!
Once again you have me in awe. Thank you so much for the visual on how to make these. I like the idea of not using facial features like the wooden ones that Elizabeth uses from Worship Woodworks. These are fantastic!
HELP! We’ve studied the picture of how you made Mary and we CAN’T replicate it just with the aid of your pictures! Can you e-mail me or reply here with detailed directions? Thanks!
Ok, I’ll try! Mary was difficult. I fiddled with her for quite awhile before I got her looking like I wanted.
Lets see. Her white and blue robes were made just like the others, with the exceptions of the blue being a wider piece to form sleeves, and the slit for the neck opening being broader and front-to-back, rather than shoulder to shoulder. Then I used a pipe cleaner around her waist, twisted tight in back, and folded her arms forward.
The head covering was harder. I cut out a half-circle, big enough to go from the top of her head to her feet.I wrapped the straight side around her head, centered in front, and glued it there. The straight edges I brought together to where they overlapped an inch or so behind and I glued them together. Then I folded the back down flat and glued it to the back of her dress to hold it straight down, otherwise it stuck out in back. I brought the sides forward and glued them a bit to the sides of her dress to hold them in place, which created the folds at the sides of her head.
I hope the directions are not too confusing. Let me know if you need more help!
Yay! Oh, I hope it works for us. We started this project late (wasn’t sure I had the stamina for it) and I thought I had everything figured out. We were going to just skip the candles. I didn’t have a clue as to how to make them until your golf tee suggestion. Thanks so much!
These are awesome!
OK, another ? Did you find your Apostles/Saints symbols somewhere online?? I love this idea of having them on the bottom, very clever!! Blessings!
I got them from a thread on the 4real boards. A post by Jenn I believe.