Even Steven and Odd Todd Gingerbread Cut Outs

Pin It

We have been enjoying the Christmas season here at our house. We have also been doing a lot of learning. We read the book, Even Steven and Odd Todd by Kathryn Cristaldi which teaches children about odd and even numbers. We decided to make a Christmas themed craft about Even Steven and Odd Todd to reinforce the odd even pattern. We cut out a ginger bead chain out of paper. The original intent was to use brown paper, but we were out of brown construction paper and we did not have a paper bag so we improvised and used yellow paper instead. Even Steven all looks the same with a white button on his right arm, black button on his left arm, and a blue heart in the middle. Every Odd Todd looks different although Little BBQ did not want him to look too different because he wanted Odd Todd to have friends and dress nice. I think my little boy is already very socially conscious.

Posted on virtual refrigerator

Eric Carle Style Art

This week when I exploring some new art options for Little BBQ I came across Eric Carle's web-site where he has short videos on how to make the caterpillar found in the Very Hungry Caterpillar. How cool is that? I thought that the technique was a little too difficult for Little BBQ and a few too many steps at this age, so I modified the technique to have few steps for him. The modified technique did not have the rich textures that Eric Carle's caterpillar had, but it was still a lot of fun and came out nice.

For the modified Eric Carle caterpillar technique we used colored tissue paper instead of white. This saved us from taking a white sheet of tissue paper and having to paint it a solid color. I also pre cut the shapes for Little BBQ since I did not think that he had the patience to cut delicate tissue paper without tearing it, so this saved us another step. We taped out caterpillar onto a piece of string to hang on the wall because the caterpillar was too large to fit on a piece of paper, but you can easily glue a smaller caterpillar on a piece of paper.

For reading about caterpillars we read Waiting for Wings by Louis Elhart along with the Very hungry Caterpillar because Waiting for Wings went into more detail about butterfly anatomy and was a little more detailed on the life cycle of butterfly than the Very Hungry Caterpillar. I also like that the book was simple enough for Little BBQ to read out loud to me. The sentences are short and each page contains a single sentence making the reading bite size.

Materials

Colored tissue paper
Scissors
Paint
Dish
Water
Paint brush
Bubble wrap, small piece
String
Tape
Glue
Eye
Marker

Directions

1. Cut the tissue paper into caterpillar parts. You can use circles or another shape for the body and head of a caterpillar. You can have the child do this part if they are gentle and coordinated or you can have an adult do this part.
2. Put a little paint in a dish and add a little water. Mix well.
3. Have the child paint a design on the tissue paper shapes. Eric Carle usually does zig zag lines. My son did blobs.
4. Allow the tissue paper to dry.
5. Add a little more paint and water to a dish and mix well. Use a different color than you did with the first paint.
6. Add dots to the caterpillar parts.
7. Allow to dry.
8. Add a little more paint and water to a dish and mix well. This should be a unique color that has not been used before.
9. Dip the bubble wrap in the paint and stamp the paint on the caterpillar pieces.
10. All the tissue paper to dry.
11. Arrange the caterpillar in the desired order. Flip the pieces over. Measure a string two inches longer than the tissue paper pieces.
12. Tape the tissue paper pieces to the string. Leave 1" on either side of the caterpillar.
13. Flip the caterpillar back over and glue an eye on the head and with a marker draw a mouth.
14. Hang up your creation!

Posted on Kids Get Arty

Book: My Friends the Flowers

I love the flowers of spring. Spring this year is even more exciting because we are living in a new location, and that means new flowers. Last year Miss Bubbles was still little and could not tolerate being outside much, so we did only small chunks of time outside. This year Miss Bubbles is bigger, and we have a backyard, so we are spending lots of time outside. One of my favorite things that I did as a child was to press flowers and make collages out of them.

I decided that it was time to let Little BBQ enjoy this favorite past time of mine. Last week we picked flowers from the backyard, then we placed them between newspapers and put them under some heavy boxes. One week later we had some nicely pressed flowers. To give Little BBQ some inspiration we read the book, My Friends the Flowers. The book used a lot of personification to give personalities to the flowers. Then, in the back of the book there was a small identification guide for flowers. Most of the flowers in the back of the book we did not find in our backyard, but it was still fun to look at the pictures of the flowers.

After reading the book, I let Little BBQ make his collage. I was thinking that this was going to be a 2 dimensional project, but Little BBQ decided to stack the flowers individually on top of each other and glue them that way. It is funny sometimes how I envision an art project and how Little BBQ interprets the project in a completely different way.

Book: Commotion in the Ocean

We have been working on studying the ocean and creatures that live in the ocean. One book that we really loved was Commotion in the Ocean. The book had pretty bright pictures and a story line that just had a nice rhythm to it when you read it out loud. The book didn’t go into any technical details but instead just made light of different characteristics of sea life. We decided to make our ocean. We made a clam, crab, dolphin, fish, and a jellyfish. This was a perfect preschool book.

Book: Flower Ball

I love books that use a lot of personification; I think it helps to stimulate a child’s imagination. The book, Flower Ball by Sigrid Laube, is a fun fantasy book about inclusion and acceptance. In the book, the vegetables and the flowers don’t get along, but no one can remember why they don’t get along. One day cauliflower decides that he wants to attend the beautiful flower ball; carrot decides to join him. The two travel together to the flower ball where the flowers stare at the party crashers. As the evening goes on the two groups realize that there really is no reason that they don’t like each other, and they decide to become friends. As our activity for this book we decided to personify dandelion since there are so many bold dandelion flowers in bloom right now. Little BBQ informed me that dandelion is a male who wears a dress, so we made a paper doll that wears and dress. He drew a face on dandelion. Little BBQ gave dandelion a hat on top of his well decorated dress.

 

Book: The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle

This week we continued on our gardening path. We read the book, The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle. It was a cute book about a tiny seed that survives and thrives much longer than all of its other larger seed counterparts. One seed falls in the ocean, one seed grows to flower that gets picked, another seed gets stepped on as a small plant, and other seeds had other adventures. The book is a great spring board to discuss seasons and planting seeds. As our follow up activity for the book we looked at some seeds under a microscope.  We looked at flax, coriander, and chive seeds under a microscope. The coriander seed was the most visually stunning seed with its round shape and pretty markings on the outside.

Coriander seed:

Chive seed:

Flax seed:

Flax seed up close:

After we looked at the seeds under a microscope we planted herb seeds in recycled pots and plastic containers. We took plastic containers like milk jugs and cut the tops off and poked holes in the bottom. Little BBQ painted the pots. Then we planted flax, coriander, chive, anise, and lavender seeds in the various recycled pots. Little BBQ got a little impatient and wanted the flowers to grow NOW so he took a fake flower and planted it in one of the pots so he could have his flowers now.

Book: Imaginary Garden

Spring is here at is raining…a lot. With the warmer weather the kids and I are anxious to get outside and get our hands dirty in the garden, but Mother Nature has had other plans for us.  To quell our desire to be outside we indulged ourselves into fantasy land with the book, The Imaginary Garden, by Andrew Larsen. The book is about a little girl and her grandfather. The little girl loves her grandfather’s flower garden, but her grandfather moves to an apartment where he can no longer garden. To recreate the grandfather’s garden the pair decide to take a trip down fantasy lane and paint a picture of their ideal garden. As the season goes on the pair update the picture with more blooms.

Since we have already placed our seed order for the season, we did not need our seed catalogues anymore. Instead of throwing the seed catalogue away, Little BBQ was allowed to cut pictures from the catalogue and make his own imaginary garden.  I was nervous about letting him use big boy scissors for the first time instead of toddler scissors, but he did well with the transition.

Book: Terrible Storm

On our usual weekly library run, Little BBQ picked out the book, Terrible Storm by Carol Otis Hurst.  The book is about the blizzard of March 1888 that left the north east covered in a thick layer of snow for 3 days.  The book is about two men with opposite personalities and that ended up waiting out the snow storm in opposite but unpleasant ways.  For a preschooler, the book this really brings into the light the idea of opposites.   With Little BBQ I asked if he would rather be in a room full of people or a room full of animals, and he responded a room full of animals, so for our art project corresponding to the book he drew a picture of himself in a room full of people, the opposite of what he would have wanted.  To make the snow, he took the eraser end of a pencil and dipped into white paint. 

The Very Hungry Little Caterpillar

Once a week we go to the library and stash up on books to read for the week. Last week we got the classic children’s book, The Very Hungry Little Caterpillar by Eric Carle. The book has wonderful colored pictures a very simple story that early readers can read by themselves.  The hole through the food is ingenious and Little BBQ’s favorite part. The book also teaches children about the life cycle of a butterfly.  I used the book to help teach Little BBQ about sequencing of events. We discuss what comes first in the life cycle of the butterfly and relate that to how human babies grow up to be adults. To end our study of the book we did an art project showing the life cycle of a butterfly. The leaf cut outs were leftovers from a thankful tree that we completed around Thanksgiving. The egg is a marshmallow. The little caterpillar is made of a series of marshmallows. The big caterpillar is made of pom poms, and the butterfly is made of a coffee filter and a twist tie. 

Tibetan Prayer Flags

This week homeschooling has been very slow because Little BBQ has been sick. When Little BBQ is sick, he does not want to do anything but sleep. It really stresses and freaks me out when he is sick because he is such an active little kid. He is the type of kid that can barely sit through dinner, and when he is sitting, he is fidgeting. Now that Little BBQ is feeling better we can continue on with our schooling. We started a small unit study on Tibet. Little BBQ picked some books about Tibet from the library last week, so we have been enjoying some Tibetan folklore.


One of the stories that we read was “Yeshi’s Luck” from the book Tibetan Tales for Little Buddhas. The lesson in the story is that we don’t know what life is going bring us; things that at first might seem bad can be good and vice versa, so we should just take life as it comes at us. I really wanted to focus on this story this week because Little BBQ has an explosive temper because he is a very passionate child. While I love his passion, I need to teach him different ways to cope with his temper other than throwing things or hitting things. Contained in the story is a chant, “Om Mani Padmé Hung” that is pronounced OHM MAHnee peMAY hoong. The chant means, “the jewel is in the lotus blossom.” Every time an event occurs in the story the father repeats this chant to clear his mind. I am trying to teach Little BBQ to do the same thing whenever he feels a temper tantrum coming on. Little BBQ really likes the chant and says it really slowly to really annunciate the different sounds in the chant. So far he has said the chant after he has a temper tantrum and not before, but it is a start.

The other cool thing that the story highlights at the end is prayer flags. In Tibet, people write prayers on pieces of bright colored cloth and put them on a string and hang them outside (Rose, 2004, p 4). We obviously don’t know any Tibetan prayers, so we put things that we are thankful for on our Tibetan prayer flags. Some things that Little BBQ included on his flags were, “mommy, daddy, little sister, pink, food, kitties, and sun.” I also wrote a poem on one flag that was contained in the story. The poem is posted below.

Life is like a potter’s clay
changing shape from day to day.
As stars sparkle in the sky
light and dark go quickly by.
What’s the future, no one knows.
Be at peace with how life goes.

(Rose, 2004, p 23)

I am having Little BBQ memorize the poem. When things upset him, we discuss the poem. The poem is really beautifully and speaks to us all on those hard days when life seems to take a turn for the worse. I think our whole family can learn a lot from the Tibetan culture. I hope you enjoy our paper version of Tibetan prayer flags.