Craft Gossip

Independent craft blog since 2007

Let’s Talk About Glass

by

howeeshow1

Allow me to introduce myself. I’m a crazed bead maker. An avid glass enthusiast. I fuse it and melt it and will mosaic it if that needs to happen. I teach bead making and glass fusing and have been fortunate enough to have appeared on TV showing off some of my skills. I’ve tried different techniques and seen a variety of demos. I have learned technical information and tried out different types of glass. I make jewelry with glass beads. I macramé curtains with glass beads in them. I am your basic lover of glass. That’s why I’m here.

My plan with this blog is to help you love glass too. I want to show you what other glass lovers are doing, what new products are out there to be used to alter your glass, any new glass available on the market, all of the places to go to learn about glass. All things glass.

With all of the conferences and organizations related to glass in the world there is a vast body of information I plan to seek out and write about. I look at this blog as my venue for information on glass that other glass lovers need to know. I will always be looking for more information and ask that if there’s something I need to know please share it with me. If you have classes or shows or meetings that need to be posted I’ll post them for you. The more information the better.

In my over 15 years of glass experience I’ve been privileged with a variety of opportunities and lessons which I’ll share with my readers. But I’m always learning more and plan to share those lessons too. I’m planning on tutorials and projects from myself as well as those of you other glass lovers out in the world. This is all about sharing the love because I feel beads are love…glass is love and I sure do love glass. It’s all about the glass!

Have you read?

Resources for Learning about Squirrels

Did you know that October is Squirrel Awareness Month? I didn’t know we needed more awareness of these little creatures, but let’s take it as a sign to learn more about squirrels! 

Let’s start with some fun facts via Kids Konnect: did you know there are five subfamilies and more that 280 species of squirrels? The smallest are pygmy squirrels and the largest, the Bhutan giant flying squirrel, can be longer that 4 feet (1.2 meters). 

Tree squirrels can climb down trees so fast because their ankles can rotate 180 degrees, allowing them to grab the tree bark as they go down. While most squirrels don’t survive their first year of life, they can live five to 10 years in the wild and squirrels have been known to live up to 20 years in captivity!

Rhythms of Play has more fun facts and tips for observing squirrels if you want to add some real life nature to your nature study. 

We always like to start these collections with life cycle and parts of the animal printables, so let’s grab the squirrel life cycle an parts of a squirrel worksheets from Montessori Nature. (It doesn’t look like these are free any more but they have a whole unit study on squirrels you can buy that includes life cycle and parts activities, characteristics of different kinds of squirrels, a printable poster, information about predators and more.)

Grab the squirrel lapbook printable (free with email address) from Homeschool Share to learn the parts of a squirrel, where they live, what they eat, whether they hibernate and more. There’s also a nut taste test printable, a place for making observations about squirrels, life cycle of an oak tree, games and more. 

Simple Everyday Mom has some cute squirrel themed worksheets including tracing the letter s, labeling the parts of a squirrel and a letter s maze. She also has more activity pages with a squirrel theme, including matching, a more traditional maze and a counting and graphing activity. 

Work on letter recognition with this squirrel and acorn game printable from Teaching Mama. I love the idea of hiding the letters in a fall themed sensory bin for kids to find, identify and match to the letter on the worksheet. 

For older kids you can do this “if I were a squirrel” writing prompt from Lesson Planet. 

And throw in a little counting with these squirrel and acorn tens frame printables from JDaniel4’s Mom, which you can use to count real acorns or any other little fall themed thing you have handy.