07 Jun Contentment – Who Dun It? – June 2013

Posted at 14:16h in 2013, Contentment, Environment, Life App, Once by lisa 0 Comments
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Life App: Contentment
Theme: Who Dun It?
Date: June 2013

Base Camp? Not Just Yet

While most 252 Basic users launched their Base Camp series this past Sunday, we kicked off the life app of Contentment. We’ll launch our Base Camp series the last Sunday of June. We are busy preparing for it, as it will be our Summer XP this year. That means it will be a complete transformation of our environment and programming. Look for posts about our that in the coming weeks.

Our summer schedule looks different than usual and will not exactly follow the same schedule as 252 Basics, however, we will use all of their curriculum and content. Read more about our plan for summer here. For now, we’ve pulled the Contentment curriculum from our archives. It was from August of 2012 but we hadn’t used it because we were in the midst of our Zapped Summer XP.

Idea Tank

So, while this post might not be too helpful for this month, we thought we’d at least share some photos and our process. We hope every post and every photo on this blog will serve as an idea tank for future sets across the board. I know I often look at photos posted on 252 Basics Facebook page and/or Twitter and my mind starts working. I am inspired by what I see and begin to bookmark ideas and thoughts about how I could do something in the future. I hope that is always the case on this blog (that you could look at archived photos and processes and get ideas for things you are currently creating) but I especially hope for that this summer, as our schedule will most likely not match up with yours if you are using 252 Basics scope and cycle. September will bring us back on track and we’ll hopefully have ideas and processes posted ahead of time for the upcoming months.

Contentment

This set was purposely planned to be simple. We had spent a lot of energy and resources on our Patience set and our “Chillinator” for May. In addition, I have a daughter graduating from high school this month and I’m leaving the country for 10 days just prior to the launch of our Summer XP.  This didn’t leave a lot of time in June to prepare for our Summer XP (which is usually when we would be creating, painting, etc.) so, we decided we would use the end of May to prepare for our Base Camp Summer Series and that meant we wouldn’t be able to put a lot toward our June set for Contentment. Even still, this simple set has become one of my favorites! Here is what we did:

Process

  • We used 10 panels of insulation foam that we had painted green for our Friendship set back in April.
  • IMG_2013We enlarged the detective from the 252 Basics theme graphic using our projector. We traced the image directly onto the right side of the backdrop and painted it black (again directly on the backdrop).  This means our backdrop will they’ll need to be repainted if we want a full green backdrop again, but we knew this would look the best and be the fastest option. 
  • We used one of the panels of insulation foam that had been painted white for our Patience set and cut it down a bit. We drilled holes across the top and then used PVC piping to loop through the holes to create an oversized spiral notebook.
  • IMG_1999We used a blue marker to make lines across the notebook and a red marker to make one line down the left side as a margin.
  • We cut letters using the Cricut that said “Clues to Contentment” and affixed them across the top line of the notebook with double-sided tape.  We also cut the numbers 1, 2, 3, & 4 and affixed them down the side of the notebook in the margin. The plan is to use the bottom line each week and add it to the notebook as we discover a new “Clue to Contentment” each week.
  • We will print out the bottom line on 11×17 paper and attach it to a long piece of poster-board. Then we’ll put velcro on the back of the bottom lines and on the notebook itself so our “clues” can be removed and reattached for each service (we have 3 each Sunday morning) each week.
  • We hung the notebook in the center of the stage using T-Pins.
  • We found an image of a fingerprint and had it printed on Photo Tex. We added an “ID” to the image using the name of our comic host from our Family Experience. He is well known as “quite the character” in our elementary environment, so we thought it would be fun to have  “his fingerprint” on our set. We hung this on the left side of our set.
  • We printed an image of footprints similar to those in the 252 Basics Theme graphic. We cut them out and created a stencil on poster-board.
  • IMG_2043We used the stencil to make footprints across the backdrop. We let them “trail” from the fingerprint, across the notebook portion of the set, over to the detective. Again, we painted the footprints directly on the backdrop, so we have forfeited our green backdrop unless we repaint over it for future use.

Like I said, this has become one of my favorite sets. While we tried not to make it too “pre-schoolish” it does remind me of when my girls were little and loved the show Blues Clues-with Steve, his notebook and the thinking chair! Having a daughter graduate from high school this month, I’m grateful for the reminder of those precious days.

Hope you all are having fun with whatever you are doing this month. Don’t forget to share what you’re up to here!