American Girl class: Addy Week 5

This week in class, we read book five (before class) in the Addy series, Addy Saves the Day! and discussed it. I had planned to make "Spool Puppets" like Addy does in the book. But I could not find enough spools for my classes and had to order them. We will make them next week in class instead. So this week, we made "Ida Bean" dolls, like the one Addy's mom gave to her in the books.

This week had more advance work for me. I traced the dolls onto fabric that I had left over from this Kaya project that we did. I found the pattern for them here. Then I sewed the two pieces together, and left the end open on the bottom. The girls turned them inside out, (and no one missed that step!), filled them with beans (a little messy!) and sewed up the bottom edge with needle and thread. Then I give them fabric pieces that were 9" X 3", and they got two of these per girl. They folded the pieces into thirds, and put them over the dolls' shoulders. The skirt piece was 6" X 17", and I tried gathering them on my machine at home, to no avail. So they got a straight piece and wrapped it around the dolls' waist. Then they wrapped a piece of yarn (about 2' long) around the doll's waist three times and tied it in the back. (I found several fat quarters that I used for the doll's dresses.)

After the dress was on, I gave them blue thread to make the eyes (I can't make a french knot, which would have been best) and they tried doing X's or "eye shapes" (ovals). I gave them pink thread for the mouth and explained how to do a chain stitch. For the hair, I bought bulky black yarn that looked like hair. I wrapped my hair around her head several times and hand-sewed it on top of her head. Several of the girls liked their doll's hair long, so they left it hanging down on the sides.

The girls really liked their dolls, and many of them said they were going to call it "Ida Bean", or Addy. My daughters liked my doll after I filled it with beans, even before she even had clothes on, so I knew my students would love them!

For snack, we had Molasses Cookies. You can find the recipe here. Most of the girls liked them a lot!

Here is the 1:00 class...

Girls showing me their dolls...

Aren't they cute?!

This girl thought it was so funny to have her dolls 

lined up and hooked together! :-D

So sweet!

The 2:00 class...

 Several of the girls in this class didn't get their hair on their dolls, so I didn't get as many pictures of them.

So far in our classes, we made corn husk dolls with Kaya, a clothespin doll with Felicity, and for Kirsten we made a yarn doll. I think this Ida Bean doll may be the favorite of all! It was another delightful day. I can't believe we are almost done with Addy- One more week!

A few other details for teachers: I used about 7/8 yard of fabric (folded) to get 9 dolls. I hope that helps you measure your fabric! For the beans, I figured about 2 cups or 8.5 oz per doll. I bought 14 pounds total and didn't use one two pound bag. (for 22 students, but 3 were absent!) I promised the girls no sewing next week! :-D