crafts in school

i bet you all think i spend my days in school looking at cadavers and learning about bones and muscles, huh? nope...this semester we have an entire class period dedicated to learning about CRAFTS. that's right. there really is a good theory behind it all, though. apparently, if we can get our patients to whittle away on a piece of wood or paint a figurine, they won't even realize they're receiving therapy until we've practically cured them of whatever ails them. they will gain strength, fine motor skills, activity tolerance, cognitive rehabilitation, and even practice some social skills. i have had a very fun time learning the crafts, my class is full of very non-crafty people, so it has been a huge learning experience and experiment for us all. NONE of us even knew how to thread a sewing machine...at least the ones the school has.

oh, and each day, we are each assigned a different diagnosis and we have to complete the crafts as if we have the use of only one arm, visual impairment, memory loss, etc...it gets pretty chaotic, but we're supposed to figure out how the craft can be adapted for different degrees of difficulty. anyway, here are the first crafts i made:

the day we made the baby quilts, i had to call my mama and tell her i finally made a quilt. she has made about 5 gazillion, the kind you cut and piece together, and this is MY very first, and it is simply tied. my quilting partner (mean deb, who's not really mean) and i were the first students to ever finish within the time limit of one class period. we rocked. i mean, come on people...those are HAND-SEWN edges! so i guess i'll start with those photos...ta-duh! my quilt (which really isn't mine, because we donate most of our finished crafts to local charities):







here is my hand-carved wooden car...i didn't have to carve the wheels, thank heavens, and i really, really wanted to paint it, but they wouldn't let us:



here are the cards i made (i was not in a creative mood this day, i finished in about 10 minutes, we had over 2 hours to work on them...oops, sorry charity):



here is my tile coaster...one of the only projects i get to keep:



here is the baby hat i made on a loom:



and here are my embroidered Christmas ornaments (i really had fun with this craft):



we still have leather working, crocheting, knitting, and a few others to master. so, i may not know which bone the thigh bone is connected to, but i can glitter and glue with the best of them. woohoo!