stArt- Owl Babies

Owl Babies is a beautifully illustrated story about three baby owls who wake up one night to find their Mummy is gone.  It is a lovely gentle story about separation and how it is OK in the end.  It is not too wordy but has a repeating chant of "I want my Mummy said Bill" that the kids love to join in with.
This book has special place in my heart because when A was 3 it was his favourite book (aside from the Thomas the Tank Engine stories of course!). We bought it when he was having trouble being left at Nursery School in the hope that it would help him learn how to separate from me (it didn't, but that is a whole other story) and he requested it every night for months on end.  B was introduced to it once or twice but has only recently developed a long enough attention span for me to get past page 2 in any of our books!  This morning however B and I were woken up at 2 a.m. by A and could not get back to sleep right away so we crept downstairs to read a book or two to try to get B to sleep.  A meanwhile went straight back to sleep in B's bed - typical!  The book B chose was Owl Babies.  Not only did we have it in the early hours but throughout the morning he kept bringing it back to me again saying "Bill lose Mummy! Read it! Read it!" so we temporarily abandoned our plans for using valentines based stuff and switched to owls instead.
The first idea I had was to use a toilet roll and cover it with feathers and stick on eyes and beak for an owl face; I must have seen this somewhere at some point but I can't for the life of me think where... anyway, the feathers are conspicuous by their absence from the craft box so I decided that we would do some shape cutting and sticking instead.  Using the template from First School found here this is what we made.

Come to think of it this could fit in with a Valentines theme since it is made from heart shapes.  Ours is a night time picture because the story takes place at night and it is definitely Mummy Owl because she is flying.  B was OK about  putting the glue on the shapes but didn't want to make the picture, that's what happens when your big brother wakes you up at 2 a.m. I guess!  When we get a chance we will add more owl themed stuff (see trace make etc), until then this was just a quick morning project - hope you like it.

For more book inspired things to share head over to A Mommys Adventures.

stArt - Oscar and the Moth- KS1 Science

Oscar and the Moth by Geoff Waring

Oscar is a kitten who meets various animals who teach him about the world in this science story series for young kids by Walker Books specially designed to support the ideas introduced for KS1 Science (4-7 year olds).  In Oscar and the Moth he meets a moth who teaches him about why we have night and day, how some creatures make their own light and how we make shadows by blocking light.  Luckily for us the IPC (International Primary Curriculum) unit that A is doing at school at the moment is "Day and Night" so he was able to take it into school to share with the whole class.

Here are some of the things we did to support the book:

• Some animals like the moth are nocturnal others are diurnal.  We did an animal sort and stuck the pictures on the day background or the night background.  We also used the colouring pages on the Nocturnal Animals listing at Enchanted Learning, each page has a lot of extra information about the animals for older students.
• We made our own constellations on black paper using stamps and paint

• We went on a light hunt.  Arm yourself with a digital camera and go for a evening walk whilst the nights are dark. This is one we actually did last year when A was in Senior Kindergarten - we were able to go to the Christmas Market in Stuttgart and look at the the lights on the stalls but there should be other things to look at that make light even around your own home.
• We did a treasure hunt in the dark. Make your room as dark as you can find a favourite teddy or stuffed toy using a torch to see by.
• Shadow puppets.  Retell a favourite story or make up your own using shadow puppets.  Any silhouette cut from card and mounted on a straw works. 
• Nocturnal animal wordsearch for the older kids- here's one I made earlier
• Online match the dinosaur shadows game.
• shadow match game on a back to school theme - sorry don't know who this is by since it is on a free file sharing site - if you know pass it on so we can give due credit.

So there is what we have been up to this week.  For other arty projects linked to books don't forget to check out

  

Number Recognition meets StArt: Postman Pat at the Seaside and a Posting Game

Postman Pat is a perennial British children's character that has travelled round the world.  He started off as a stop frame animation puppet on BBC Children's TV and of course the merchandise (like books) followed. Sadly nowadays although Postman Pat is still being made, like Bob the Builder and Fireman Sam, it is now computer animation.
We have a treasury with about half a dozen Postman Pat stories and have read them all this week. In the Seaside story Pat helps bring the beach to the village green with a lorry load of sand; it rings a few chords with us as one of the things we miss about the UK is that we can't have a day out at the seaside.  Alongside our favourite stories we all worked together to make a posting game for B.

First we made some cardboard box houses each with a number on the door.  Each has a letter box slot in the top, decorations are a family effort.
The letter themselves are cheap envelopes. These we stuffed with pages from a magazine and draw on a stamp.  B then posted the letters into the correct house.  We did the numbers 1-10 but you could use bigger numbers with older children.  This could be used with any postman story or even a community helper theme.

For what others are doing inspired by books go to A Mommys Adventures and StArt

stART - The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Since most of the stuff we have been doing this week is inspired by The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle I thought that it would be a good idea to link up to the stART project over at A Mommy's Adventures.


At  the start of the week I wrote this post about what we intended to do with the book.Here are some of the things  we actually did.
A decided to be very literal.

B was a bit bemused by the caterpillar though the holes stuff...and mummy discovered how hard it is to take a decent picture at arms length whilst reading a story and balancing a book!

We decided that it would be easier to make a butterfly mobile rather than a food mobile.  I cut out plain butterfiles from blank white paper.

B coloured some along with the table

R coloured others

A decided he wanted his own mobile with bees instead

We laminated the coloured butterfiles.  R helped by cutting them out then we hole punched top and bottom and attached some string.

the end result looked brilliant.

For more ideas check out 
over at  A Mommy's Adventures.