The kids and I had so much fun with the Summer Virtual Book Club for kids, that we decided we would continue on the journey with our fabulous hosts Toddler Approved, Mommy and Me Book Club, The Educators’ Spin On It, and 20+ kid bloggers. A wonderful list of authors were compiled last month for our book club, and so the journey begins as we continue to spotlight a new author every month.
This month our featured author is Lois Ehlert, who wrote books such as Planting a Rainbow, Eating the Alphabet, Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf, Fish Eyes, Feathers for Lunch, and Nuts to You!
My kids and I sat down and read RRRALPH and Boo to You! The kids and I enjoyed reading both books, especially RRRALPH, which is about a talking dog (it’s so silly it really made them giggle). But in the end we decided to feature Boo To You! because it put us in the mood for Fall, as we had some sweltering heat here in Southern California this past week. Temperatures went from the mid 90’s to 100’s!
Boo to You! is about a bunch of mice who are getting ready for a harvest party in the garden. However there is one guest they did not invite, the scary cat. The mice are on edge as the cat is near, are they successful at scaring the cat away? What’s great about this book are that the illustrations have lots of shapes and textures that are fun to look at. We loved how they used real foods to illustrate the characters. One pumpkin has a gourd nose and broccoli ears, while another has Indian corn ears, a horse chestnut nose and pumpkin seed teeth. The kids and I tried to figure out what each character in the book was made out of, and luckily there is a picture list of Harvest items at the end of the book to help guide us.
We were inspired to make our own fun textured pumpkins using items what we found outdoors on a nature hike. After doing this activity it would be fun to use what is leftover from our nature hike to make these fun leaf crafts.
Supplies:
- Orange paper
- Collection from nature (twigs, leaves, flowers, seeds, berries, etc) I also added some popcorn kernals and farfalle or bow-tie pasta.
- Glue
- Scissors
Directions:
At this point, the kids and I had read Boo To You! several times already, so the kids were studying the illustrations on how the pumpkins or each character for that matter were creatively created by various items such as seeds, flowers, vegetables, nuts, gourds, corn, etc.
The kids and I then when on a little nature walk to find our own leaves, flowers, berries, etc.
Here’s what the kids collected outside. I added some popcorn kernels and farfalle (bow-tie pasta) to the mix. If we had some off hand I would have liked to add some walnuts or pumpkin seeds like they had in the book.
Using a plate, I outlined a circle on orange construction paper, and cut them out for our pumpkins.
The kids then happily started creating their nature pumpkins using what they had collected.
I loved listening to my kids discuss with each other what they were going to use as the ears, mouth, nose, etc.
Here is my daughter’s nature pumpkin:
Now that we’ve shared our activities with you, we’re excited to see what you came up with! Please add your links to any Lois Ehlert inspired posts to the blog hop linky below.
There are a few rules for this blog hop that we ask you to follow, so make sure to read them:
-Link up only posts inspired by Lois Ehlert that share children’s book inspired crafts, activities, recipes, etc. Any other posts will be deleted.
-Visit other blog posts on the linky and comment on or share the ones you love!
This is a Blog Hop!