Foolish Tortoise Painted Rocks

This month the Virtual Book Club for Kids author was Eric Carle. We love Eric Carle, and own many of his books. We read several all month, but choosing one for our project and post was hard. In the end, we went with The Foolish Tortoise because it was one we didn't know as well.

Big Brother has been asking for a while to paint rocks, and this seemed like a perfect extension project. The book tells of a tortoise who takes off his shell, only to learn how much it needs it for protection. We painted the rocks to look like the shells and added felt bodies. 

We started with some smooth rocks we found in the yard and craft acrylic paints.

This summer we're excited to have Little Miss H spending some of her days with us and already she's loving our project time. Both big kiddos loved painting the rocks and did more than one. 

The kiddos tried to cover as much of the rock as they could and add lines, swirls, or dots. 

After the rocks dried I placed them onto felt and traced the shape of the rock. I then added legs and a head and cut the shapes out. I then used hot glue to attach the felt body to the rock. 

The kids enjoyed playing with the herd of tortoises afterwards and could easily become part of a small world play set up. They could also make a really cute paper weight or grandparent gift.