Light the Night

The Books

 I talked to the the group about being happy and loving as shining from the inside. I compared that to being angry or sad and being dark. I gave examples of "dark me and light me". 

They were amused. 

I sang  Raffi's book This Little Light of Mine and they joined in.

I read David Shannon's The Amazing Christmas Extravaganza ,

a somewhat dark and humorous tale of a dad who gets out of control decorating. 

He ignores his family and angers his neighbors: and later, he sees the light and is redeemed. 

The Star Tree by Gisela Colle is Christmas story about an old, lonely man living in a big city and remembering  holidays of long ago. He cuts stars out of gold paper then takes them out to the countryside and hangs them on a tree where they could shine by the light of the moon. A huge wind comes through the city and tears down the power lines. In the dark, the city people see the the moon, the old man, and the paper stars glowing in light and join him. It really is sweet. The illustrations are primitive and have a very European feel. 

The Crafts

The crafts were very simple. They put self-adhesive jewels on glass votive candle.(Note: There was a light (tee hee) waxy residue on the outside of the glass. In order for the jewels to stick, I cleaned them off with rubbing alcohol) They drew stars on the back of  glitter paper and cut them out.  Most of them were independent and  I loved the different personalities the stars had. 

During the craft and snack time I played 

This little Light of Mine performed by different musicians. 

The Snack

They freaked when I told them we were going to eat lit candles

but, they loved the pretzel sticks and light cheese spread!

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT!

                               

You are what you eat and other mealtime hazards by Serge Bloch is a cleverly written book that uses figures of speech that are related to food and eating. It was a great opener for our program

 and the children were as pleased as punch.

Heckedy Peg by Audrey and Don Wood is written and illustrated as a classic fairy tale.

The book is about a mother who saves her seven children from Heckedy Peg, 

a witch who has changed them into different kinds of foods.

The craft is based on the art of Arcimboldo

I found and printed fruit and vegetable images from the internet for the program. I drew an outline of a face and copied it on cream colored card stock then, I glued it to cardboard to 

frame sturdy and frame it. Above are my examples. 

The students experimented with different looks before gluing. This could be a fun interactive activity if the pieces were laminated and moved around on the face, so many possibilities  - 

To end our program with a bang I read Frankenstein makes a sandwich by Adam Rex . 

Then I constructed a Frankenstein sandwich from an unsettling combination 

foods both new and used.

It was wild, gross, laughing and yelling fun! 

Out of the Book

An idea for a craft can come from the book itself,
as in the book Cool Cat,Hot Dog by Sandy Turner. 

I was drawn to it by the unique and clever use of collage and the competitive banter
between cat and dog that makes it a perfect picture book for an older audience.

I presented  this program with Darcy, one of my co-workers at the time,
and we held our cat and dog puppet as we read the dialogue.
The children had to vote who was the best. Cat or dog? Dog won.

I photocopied images of cat and dog along with key phrases in the book.

For materials I used different shades of light weight cardboard, brown paper grocery bags,
graph paper,discarded J fiction, tissues, markers, scissors and glue.
 I had several copies of her book on the tables for them to look through.
They enjoyed recreating the style of Turner's collage using recycled materials.

The program's title was It's Raining Cats and Dogs!  We also read and included                     ;   

Woof a Love Story by Debra Weeks is about a dog and cat that fall in love- 

yet there is a big communication problem- very funny and sweet.

Why do I Have to Eat Off the Floor? by Chris Hornsey is about 

a dog that has to come to grips that he isn't a human.

We served Cracklin Oat Bran dry cereal ( it looks like dog food) - 

The whole group was on all fours eatin' like dogs.

We all were crackin up laughing. Good dog!

Enlarging Illustrations

 

The books Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Pickles to Pittsburgh by Ron and Judi Barrett were having a revival, and I wanted to do a program celebrating them. 

The complete set of both titles was republished in 2009 and the movie 

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was released later that year. 

My kids grew up with these books and we loved them along with 

Animals Should Definitely  Not Wear Clothing. The big problem that I had with 

the books was that the illustrations were too small for a large group. 

To solve issue I used a  real view overhead projector called the Elmo Document Camera.

I  was able to project the book's illustrations while reading it. The kids loved it and I solved the image problem. I have used this for other program and event needs. 

Today, if I had to do it again I would scan the images and put them in a slide show 

and project them from the laptop with an In-Focus projector.

 

The craft was to recreate the city and food of both books. I included stiff cardboard for the children 

to make buildings with windows and doors, signage and helicopters on toothpicks 

for Chewandswallow. There were mashed potatoes, peas, carrots, pickles and, 

of course, meatballs. 

The kids had fun with their creations and enjoyed snacking too.

Snow Wishes

In 2010, we had fun with Snow Wishes (in the south that's about all you can do).

We had our snow stories, and the children cut out their own tortilla snow flakes. I had an assistant who baked them in the oven and sprinkled powdered sugar on them.

In order to identify which snow flake belonged to who, I pre-cut parchment paper squares and they wrote their names on the paper before baking. Here is the recipe:

 http://spoonful.com/recipes/sweet-tortilla-snowflakes

Snowman Pencil Topper

For the other craft the children made snowmen pencils. I had already glued the Styrofoam head so they stuck the beaded eyes and mouth on. The nose is a bit of chenille pipe cleaner so they put it on with the little twigs and wrapped him in in a felt scarf.

 

At the end of the program we watched the DVD,  Ramond Brigg's The Snowman. The music and quality of animated film is fantastic and the kids really liked it.

Cooking with Books

Creating with Books evolved from a program called Cooking with Books.

For that monthly school-aged program, every craft was an edible food craft that was based on the theme of the program. I continued with the that program for about a year and began to run out of new craft ideas and we were on a tight budget so Creating with Books opened me up to more possibilities. I still incorporate food crafts into the programs. Here are some examples:

Princess and the Pea

The peas were made of fondant that I flavored with vanilla and added green food coloring to.

I gave each child a ball of it and showed them how to form the pod and peas.

You can see how I used named squares of parchment paper for baking the pizza.

You also need an assistant to mind the oven while the program continues.

Santa Stories

Here the children made either a gingerbread reindeer or snowman cookie.

The arms and antlers are pretzels, we had raisins and red hots for eyes, buttons and nose.

The others are store-bought sugar cookies that they put red frosting and toppings on.

I Dig Potatoes!

We had a vote for their favorite potato food. French fries, tots, mashed, baked, chips...

Mashed potatoes won over french fries!? One potato, two potato, rhyme choose with one. I pick you! 

I served tots and chips while I read the above stories.

The kids had fun making the potato faces and there was a good bit of nibbling on the veggies too.

The parents loved the idea and some said "Now that's an idea I will use at home!"

I used instant potatoes and followed the instructions on the box, added salt too. Frozen corn, and peas, drained black beans, fresh peppers, celery and shredded cheddar.

 The program is from 4-5 o'clock and as one mom said when she picked up her children,

"Looks like supper to me!"

IT'S ONLY ROCK & ROLL

This is the in-house display flyer I used to advertise the program. 

I used Google image search to find a eye catching visual picture then I copied and pasted it into a Word document and added my text. 

I shared the basics of Rock and Roll with the children and then read from the books above. They loved the humor of Baby Brains Superstar and I played Eric Litwig's recording of  Pete the Cat Rocking in my School Shoes and they sang the chorus along with me and the book.

I cut a template from an enlarged photo of an electric guitar and traced it on corrugated cardboard.

(Note: set your pattern with the cardboard ribs running vertical, otherwise the guitar will fold over after the rubber bands are put on. This happened during the program, and I spent a good bit of time repairing them with hot glue and large craft stick for a brace.) The arm is a paint stick and the wood bits came from Michael's. I hot glued what is shown on the guitar. I cut the rubber bands and tied a knot on each end. The guitar base and top have three slits to slide the bands into. A wooden heart became the guitar pick.

I always demonstrate the craft for the kids and give them pointers before they get started. Here's mine.

Most of the children that attended the program are in the first grade, so I needed to keep it simple. 

I set out markers, dot stickers, popsicle sticks (to help draw the frets) and rubber bands for them to attach. 

We listened to some kid friendly rock during the craft time.

After the craft we had some players showing their groove and enjoyed juice and pretzels while watching

Elton John performing Crocodile Rock on the Muppet show. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL3mYAsEp9g

And, as always there are fun theme related books for the children to check out.

S is for Snail

Eighteen children attended Creating with Books in September 2012. We had fun learning, imagining, creating and eating snails. I shared a non-fiction book highlighting facts about snails, then I shared a realistic and fantasy picture book with a snail character. 

For our craft I used snail shells and Crayola Magic Clay that I bought at Michael's and copper wire. The children colored the snail shell with silver and gold Sharpie markers, then formed the snails body and added the antennae eyes. 

 I told them that we were going to eat snails while we watch a giant snail in a movie.Yuck! Gross! 

At the end of our hour we watched the last segment of  Doctor Doolittle.

It features a giant pink snail that the characters board and sail away in and the kids did enjoy the 

 cinnamon bun snails that I made earlier.