Crafts - Seed Medallions

Seed Medallion Project November 2005

Nancy Kho

The box of supplies I inherited was very well stocked (thanks Liz!) so it was easy to prepare. I planned to provide the kids 2 lids to make, and spray painted and hung that many. Putting the holes through the lids was very easy using a nail and hammer on a concrete surface - the hardest part was finding a nail big enough to make a hole for the yarn to pass through.
There were also plenty of beans and seeds, so the only supplies I bought were clay. I found bright primary colors at the Long's Drugs on Pleasant Valley and it worked fine. Red was a popular color on the day of the feast, and if I were to do it again I would have bought a lot more clay - you'll probably need at least 5 packs of the 4-color clay packs there.
So the only real issue was that on the day of the feast, it was freezing and very very wet under the trees where our station was. The cold weather meant that the clay was very difficult for the kids to work with. By mid-morning I had recruited other parents to warm the clay over the fires and fill up the lids themselves, so that when the kids came they chose a clay-filled lid and only had to press the seeds and beans in. That was fine — there were four different craft activities, so they didn't have a ton of time for each activity. Each child only ended up making one medallion, so there are plenty of lids ready to go for next year.
The other thing was the dampness. I tried really hard to keep the beans and seeds dry but some water may have dripped into them. If you open the box next fall and discover a crop of seedlings, I'll take the blame! If they do in fact germinate, we should probably dump all the seeds every year and start again. But there were so many leftover, I didn't want to waste what could have been perfectly fine beans and seeds.
It was a great and memorable day!

Previous Feasts:

Seed Medallions 2005
Seed Medallions 2004
Seed Medallions 2003
Seed Medallions 2001 & 2002
Seed Medallions 2000
Seed Medallions 1999

Nancy provided a great description of this craft and it echoes our experience at 2006 Feast. The only thing I would add is to keep the clay-filled lids warm (but not so warm that the clay melts!) on the edges of the grill so that the kids can easily press the seeds and beans in. That modeling clay is very stiff! An disposible aluminum cookie sheet type pan would work well for this purpose and would be a good addition to the supplies.

Clay can be purchased at the Dollar Tree for a $1.00 a pack. Clay is hard to work with if it is cold so, I filled the lids with clay the night before and cut the yarn. I used my hair dryer to heat the clay it worked well. This took longer than I thought you may want to give yourself a day or two. During the feast we needed more clay so we used the fire pit to heat the clay.

There are plenty of seeds and yarn for feast 2008 but clay and lids are needed. It worked well to use a drill to punch the hold and a sander to flatten the rough edges.