Quick Pick & Project of the Week: Going for a Nature Collection Walk

Many of our Quick Picks and Projects involve an arts or crafts component, but sometimes a quick book extension can also be as easy as going for a walk. 

I've always enjoyed reading kids the book Hannah's Collections, and going for a nature walk is a fun and active extension. After the walk there are several different ways kids could use their collection too. 

Going For A Nature Collection Walk

The book  is about a little girl named Hannah who loves collecting things and has several collections  including popsicle sticks, stamps, barrettes, and more. The problem is now she needs to bring a collection to school, except she has so many collections how will she ever choose one? What's so engaging about the book are the illustrations which are a mix of collage with images of real items. 

Quick Pick and Project of the Week: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Bath

It's been a while since we posted a Quick Pick and Project of the Week, and this is one I've wanted to try for a while now.

Several years ago I read in a parenting magazine (unfortunately I don't remember which one) that you can use craft foam to create your own wall sticker bath toys. We've done it a couple times now over the past few years to create different shapes and themes. 

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Bath

 

This idea, combined with the purchase a while ago of some bath tub letters, inspired me to create a "coconut" tree for the bath tub to go along with the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin. This book has such a great rhyme and rhythm and gives everyone a fun way to practice saying all the letters in the alphabet. 

Quick Pick & Project of the Week: Dinosaur Stomp Painting

We're still putting together posts on the fun we had recently with our dinosaur week. We absolutely love the book Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp and it leant itself perfectly to our Quick Pick and Projects of the Week series.

What we love about this book is the rhymes, the use of the actual dinosaur names, and the idea that they are all celebrating somewhere together. It's really upbeat and fun to read aloud. We've gotten it out of our library several times. 

To create our dinosaur stomp paintings we used our collection of toy dinosaurs. Most of our dinosaurs come from an awesome Learning Resources play set we purchased a few years ago. They have different shaped feet, so it made the painting fun because there were different prints. 

Pudding Beach Cups

We wrapped up our Ocean themed week over the weekend by making these yummy Pudding Beach Cups. We connected this activity both to our Quick Pick & Projects of the Week and our Kids Cook! posts.

Because we used instant, no cook pudding mix Big Brother could do most of the work himself and was pretty proud of his work at the end. (It also meant they were a little brighter and a little less smoothly assembled than if I had made them, but the point was for him to be hands on with this special treat.) 

Before cooking we read a new find from our library, Beach by Elisha Cooper. The book tells the story of a day at the beach from morning to night through simple watercolors and a variety of little pictures. It reminded us of our day trip to the beach a few weeks before, which is what kicked off ocean week to begin with. 

Quick Pick & Project of the Week: Little Blue Truck Sensory Bin

This week I'm wrapping up the current school year, which means many of our projects are quick and easy to set up. We love the book Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle. The Little Blue Truck teaches the Big Dump Truck a good lesson about being kind to others in return for a helping hand.

Little Blue Truck Sensory Bin

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We had a fun idea for an easy sensory bin set up to go with the book. A little over a month ago we created a sensory bin to go with the book In the Tall, Tall Grass and it lead to some fun play. 

Quick Pick & Project of the Week: "Bring on the Birds" Feather Painting

It's been a while since we posted a Quick Pick & Project of the Week. We were inspired this week to get back to sharing a few ideas.

A couple of weeks ago we picked up this book, Bring On the Birds, from our local library. The book uses crisp illustrations and simple and engaging text to describe a variety of birds. We especially love all the verbs the book uses to describe the different birds and their actions. 

Quick Pick & Project of the Week: Seeds! Seeds! Seeds! Picture Frame

We've been a little busy with Little Brother being sick this past week, and have not had a lot of time to share what we've been up to. But we did have some time this week to still have a little fun. One of our projects of the week involved creating this seed collage picture frame as part of our Quick Pick & Project of the Week posts.

We recently found Seeds! Seeds! Seeds! by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace at our local library and we are really enjoying it. Not only does it give kids great information on how seeds grow, are different, may be used for different things, and what they need; it also gives several different ideas for projects right in the book! Buddy, the Little Bear, receives a special package from his grandfather with five bags. In each bag there is a different seed activity or project for Buddy to do. 

For our project we decided to create a seed picture frame just like Buddy creates near the end of the story. 

Quick Pick & Project of the Week: Commotion in the Ocean Watercolor And Cray Pas Painting

We must have summer on the brain with the nice weather we've had a taste of these past few days because we got excited to think about the ocean. This week's Quick Pick & Project is based on the book Commotion in the Ocean by Giles Andreae.

I absolutely love using cray pas and watercolors as a medium with kids. The cray pas make crisp, colorful lines and the watercolors fill in between the lines. The final pieces are always really vivid. I've used it a lot in the classroom with students.

I especially enjoy using it with kids as a medium for painting underwater scenes as the watercolors give a "watery" look and easily fill a whole page with color. 

Quick Pick & Project of the Week: "Puff Dragon" Paper Bag Puppet

Who doesn't love and remember the beautiful song "Puff the Magic Dragon" from when we were kids? Even though there is a sad element to this song, I've always enjoyed singing along. Big Brother, who loves to sing, has also been really enjoying the song these days.

A few years ago we bought a beautifully illustrated version of the song as a book which also came with a CD.  The words are the original lyrics as written by the song's creators, Peter Yarrow and Lenny Lipton, which mean that often we sing it aloud as we read. What we love best is at the end a little girl returns to find Puff, and there seems to be a grown-up watching from the distance, who although may be now an adult, resembles Jackie Paper as a child.

For this week's Quick Pick and Project of the Week we decided to create a Puff paper bag puppet.

Quick Pick & Project of the Week: "Tornadoes" Weather Jar

Last week we made our monthly trip to our local library and Big Brother picked out a copy of Gail Gibbon's book Tornadoes. We're big fans of Gail Gibbons as she presents nonfiction writing in a way that is approachable to all different age levels. We had never read this one before and as we read it I even learned some new things too!

I realized it would be a great fit for our next Quick Pick of the Week book. 

Quick Pick & Project of the Week: The Day the Crayons Quit Mural

The past week has been pretty busy with parent teacher conferences and a couple of other school meetings in the evenings. It's weeks like this that I am definitely aware of how many things parents (myself included) need to balance in order to keep things running smoothly. It reminded me that one of the reasons I started this blog is to give other people ideas on how to interact, connect, and create without too much fuss.

I also love discovering great kids books, and often create quick, easy to put together projects after we read something. This inspired me to create something new: The Quick Pick & Project of the Week. Each week I'll pick one great book and pair it with a no fuss extension project. I'll try to pick books which can be found at your library or easily bought online. Hopefully they inspire some of our readers to take a few moments, gather a couple of simple materials, and connect.

For our first one we used the book The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Dawalt and created a crayon mural.

We recently were given this great book by some family friends and already love it. Each color crayon writes a letter to young Duncan expressing their concern over how they're being used (or not used.) At the end he creates an amazing picture using all the colors in a variety of ways. We enjoy the humor of the story found in each letter and the Duncan's creative drawing at the end.