Ummm…. Pretend I’ve figured out how to insert a button using LiveWriter, and the button is here. I’ll figure it out soon. Hopefully.
Last week after much trials and travails we read “The Legend of the Bluebonnet” by Tomie DePaola. I think every kid in Texas has this book read to them at least once. I know when I was interning in a kindergarten class in high school the kids were read it. Then when I taught school I read it to my class. Why? Because it’s perfect for teaching this age range about Texas. We’d also usually include some of Paul Goble’s wonderful books about Indians, but I think I’m going to save some of those for when we study Oklahoma. Maybe……
And, funny story about this book. So, I actually wanted to do this project about two weeks ago. I went to the box I was sure the book was in, and it wasn’t there. Now, to really understand this dilemma you have to understand how many books I have. I have a 6 foot bookshelf full and overflowing with children’s books. Those are just the picture books. Then in the game room Jeff and I have another 10 bookshelves, those are mostly not picture books, but I have to admit my gorgeous fairy tale picture books are in my shelves. And then there’s two big tubs of books sitting behind our couch. Then another three boxes in the garage. So, when I say it was a bit of a disappointment, now you understand why. So, I searched through all the various boxes, and found lots of other wonderful treasures, but not the book I wanted. I finally broke down and went to Half Price Books and bought myself another copy. And another 6 books to go with it.
In my defense, I do have about two tubs worth of books to sell back to Half Price……. Okay, back to the project.
So, we read the story and talked about *SPOILER ALERT* how the girl gave away her most precious treasure, her doll her parents had made her. Then I asked the kids what their most precious treasure was, and what would be hard for them to give up. At first they were all about giving away their sister’s stuff. The boys were quite sure she wouldn’t mind that.
So, after much searching they all found their precious dolls, and I took a picture of them in it. I then pasted the picture into a word document and scaled it so I could have two of them side by side on the bottom half of the paper. I printed this out, and cut it into two separate pieces, and folded these papers in half like a card.
Now, I got out the blue paint we made a special trip to the store to find. Blue is Superman’s favorite color so we go through a lot of blue. And a green marker. I drew a line to represent the stem, and then had them make fingerprints all around it for the bluebonnet. Oh, and we used just a little bit of white paint to give the projects the occasional bit of difference in the blues. Again, this is one of those projects every kid in Texas makes, so it’s not super original.
Princess really was not going to cooperate with the whole make fingerprints and really wanted to fingerpaint. She did eventually put a whole handprint on half of the paper.
And here’s the finished projects that I got pictures of. Including mine, which I made so I wouldn’t keep telling the kids they were doing it wrong, and instead just let them enjoy themselves.
The outside of the little kinda sorta book. I bet you can tell which one is mine.
And then here’s the inside. Hopefully this makes my explanation a little easier to understand.
And of course it ended with my kids having a free for all painting time, and then stripping all of their clothes off and running happily to the bath tub screaming “Naked, naked, naked” over and over again. This was a fun new game. I wasn’t as thrilled.
For more great story ideas go to A Mommy’s Adventures. I might also link this up to Debbie’s geography linky over at Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn (hmmm, it didn’t automatically make that a link….. I guess I’m still figuring out this whole Live Writer thing) because ultimately this is going to go in our Texas lapbook that I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do……..
