C is for Corn

One of my favorite decorations this time of year is the Indian corn that you find at the grocery stores. I love being able to bring a feel of the harvest into the house and add it to our decor for a bit. As far as the girls are concerned tho... popcorn is their favorite form of corn and is a regular snack in our house! :)

The Popcorn Book by Tomie DePaola was a big hit to read and was really full of a lot of cool facts about popcorn. The girls really enjoyed it and I think it was a great book to go along with this easy corn craft for the ABC of Me book!

Who knew you could paint with bubble wrap! :) That is, the little bit that survived the popping that the girls jumped into (literally) the moment that I brought it out! lol Once again, I cut out the shape of the corn with my cricut, but really you could easily free hand this one. We spread the red pain on the bubble wrap and then pressed the yellow corn shape into it! Peel it back and you have a really cool print! :) I told you it was easy!!

U is for Umbrella

Rain by Peter Spier, has been one of my favorite books for as long as I can remember. It is a true picture book, no words but plenty of story to take in. I remember it feeling like a special occasion to get to sit and read this book with my mom when I was little. We'd sit down and take in every detail of the book.... all the little things that you can do on a rainy day to make it special... If you haven't read this one you really should put it on your must do list! :)

Living in the Pacific NW, we all know that rainy season is upon us. We had a beautiful summer and now it's time to gear up for a chilly and wet fall!! So.... I thought it would be fun to encorporate the rain into our ABC book! When  I got to the planning for the letter "U" it was an easy choice to do "umbrella"!

The kids set to work making puddles on their paper with watercolor paint.... brace yourself... here comes the real fun!! Then we used straws to blow the paint into splatters! :) I love the way they all turned out!! I can remember doing these in school when my mom was teaching my art class, and if I'm not mistaken she did this project in school too!! There are so many things you could do with this project. One summer we used one red white and blue and said they were fireworks... or you could draw faces and make them into animals or aliens! lol

Once the splattered masterpieces dried, we added some umbrellas glued on....I forget to take a picture of the finished product but will try to add it later. :)

Stop back by on Friday to link up any projects you have done using umbrellas and/rain! :)

A is for Apple Link up!

It's been a full week of learning... books, crafts etc... Have you done something fun that you'd like to share? Link up now! :)

A is for Apples!!

I know, not real original but hey! We live in the apple capitol so we had to go for it!! :)

There are SOOO many good books about apples but our favorites are


Apples to Oregon by Deborah Hopkinson






And our very favorite apple book ( and the one that the class has been asknig for ever since!) is Who's Got the Apple by Jan Loof. We just happened on to a copy of this as a library reject... so sad for them but so glad that we got it!! A steal at $.25!!! The girls LOVE this book and I must admit, I do too! :)

Tree cut outs from a Cricut cartridge, apple hand punch from Oriental trading....

 I guess I didn't take single pictures of the pages so you're getting a sneak peak of the next few weeks to come!! :)

And here is the version that was in my stepson's book...

There are so many things you can do with apples... my list could go on and on. Why not sit down with one of these books, make the "A" page for your book and them make an apple pie? Baked apples! Or applesauce!!
You can read about our adventures with apples last year .

ABC of me

I can't believe it's been so long since I wrote on here... I'm so ashamed that I left this space without so much as a word about why. I guess I just didn't know what to say. I soooo wanted it to be a success and it just wasn't coming together how I thought it would. Funny how life gets in the way sometimes!

For months now, I've been thinking about how I could start it back up and I guess today is the day! I love childrens books and love watching them get ideas on how to be more creative after reading a book and doing hands on crafts with it. Their little minds are just so open to new things!

Now, the format of this blog is going to be a bit different. Sometimes the best intentions just don't work out and lives take different paths. My friend Jackie isn't going to be putting in her crafts to go with these books (altho she is ALWAYS welcome to) and I will be inviting a few other friends to take part too! :) I am hoping to make my posts on Mondays, so you have all week to do them too if you want and then post a link up on Friday so you can share your ideas for that theme too! :)

For the next few months, we are going to work our way thru the alphabet. I am being lucky enough to teach an art class at our homeschool co-op and have a very diverse group of kids ranging in age from 4 all the way to 3rd grade so I had to come up with something that would work for all ages!  21 kids in a room full of crafts gets quite interesting really fast! lol I got the idea for making a book from a project my stepson did in school. I have always loved this book and treasure the pages that I got to help his class make. We aren't following it exactly, but it gave me a good place to start....

We are making pages for the "ABC of Me " book. There will be a book to read  for each letter in the alphabet and a page for the homemade book too. We are making covers for the book that will then be laminated and bound with a comb binding process that any office supply store should be able to do for you. It really is a project worth keeping for them and it's fun to look back on it when they are a bit older. :)

So please check back on Monday for our first letter "A". Just a heads up, I won't always be doing the letters in order... :O)

In the spirit of the Iditarod and our book selections for the month, we made our nature table, wipe off board and book wall all match!! Check back often to see what we've added!

Danger The Dog Yard Cat....

To celebrate the start of the Iditarod, we pulled out all our favorite Alaskan related books and even a few Alaska Magazines that I have saved over the years. The one on top is one I have held onto since I was a kid! The girls loved looking thru the pictures and ads and pointing out things they recognized from the stories we've been reading!

Next came our craft! What's more fun than acting our our very own dog race! We took a sturdy paper plate and decorated it with all the details of the race... The start in Anchorage, the trees, river and frozen lakes and finally the end in Nome!

Then made little animals and taped them to a magnet, set it on the plate and attach another magnet to a popcycle sticks and move it under the magnet already resting on the plate! Watch your animals "run"!

You can run your own miniature version of the Iditarod! :) This idea could be used for any theme really! I'd love to see what else you end up using it for! If you do, be sure to leave your link in a message and I'll add it to the post for others to see too! :)

In addition to the book, we also watched this video. It is kind of a decumentary but more like a personal home movie of his journey to the Iditarod. The girls and I really enjoyed it and just had to share this music video...