Catching Dreams

Erika had a bad dream over the weekend and woke up in tears, calling for her Dad who she had dreamed had gone to a concert without her (how dare he!). Flipping through the Kids' Multicultural Art Book that we renewed from the library after the awesome projects we did a few weeks ago, I saw a dream catcher and knew instantly that Erika would love making one. Dream catchers originated with the Chippewa and were later adopted by other Native Americans, like the Cherokee. Hung above the bed, bad dreams are thought to get entangled in them, while good dreams pass through the center (make sure you leave the center open!), down the feather, and into the dreaming person's mind. Lovely, huh? We thought so.

This project was fairly quick and Erika could do almost all of it herself (I had to figure out how to add the feathers so they would stay and tie a few knots for her). This tutorial shows more or less what we did, except we didn't put beads in the web and we had only one dangling beaded string.