Bringing Books to Life - Arts and Crafts!

This week has been lots of fun and sort of an encouragement to me.  I can tend to be on the check it off the list side and at times forget to add in the fun things that kids connect with.  We do these sort of things, just not as frequently as I would like. 

So far in the 5 Days of Bringing Books to Life we have talked about cooking with books, building things that we've read about,  fun ways to do "book reports," and dramatize it.

I think I saved the best for last!  One of the very most fun things to do after reading a book is to make a craft or art project out of it.  There are so many great books out there that make a great spring board for a craft/ art project.  Here are some suggestions:

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The Very Hungry Caterpillar - You could make one of those caterpillars out of an egg carton, one from paper, or a balloon painted caterpillar (this is really cool!). 

Make Way for Ducklings - The kids could make hand print ducks, ones with feathers or one from a paper plate.

The Little House - They could draw a picture of each of the four seasons just like in the book.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie - After reading this one you can make a toilet paper roll mouse, instead of putting cheese in his hand make him a brown paper cookie.  Why not make a cute little felt mouse puppet or even one out of pipe cleaners.   

Good Night Moon - you and the kids could make a diorama of one of the pages of the book.

The Snowy Day - Draw falling snow on dark blue paper with white chalk.  Use use cotton balls for snowmen and snow on the ground.  Make snowflake cut outs.

American Girl Books - many of the girls in this series also have a craft book to go along with the time period of their stories, we have found these at the library.

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General ideas that would work for most any book:

• Let the children draw or paint a picture from the book and then frame it.  I have found some decent black frames at the dollar store to frame my kids art work. 
• Notebooking can be a fun way to keep track of all of the children's drawings for all the books they have read in a school year.
• They can make a diorama of a scene in the book. 
• Making paper bag puppets or sock puppets of characters in the book would be lots of fun. 
• If the kids are making a picture from an illustrated book encourage them to use the same technique that the artist used.  If the artist used watercolors allow then to try the same.  We have some fun picture books where each picture is made up of different scraps and textures of paper and fabric, kids would love to try to do this too. 
• There are so many great ideas online and on Pinterest, it is pretty easy to find a craft to go along with a book. 
• Still looking for ideas, you might want to check your library for Storybook Art by MaryAnn Kohl and Art Through Children's Literature by Debi Englebaugh.

It has been lots of fun writing the 5 Days of Bringing Books to Life Series, thanks for following along this week!

 5 days, 65 bloggers, 325 blog posts! Check out what others on the TOS Crew are writing about for the 5 Days of Series here.

Do you incorporate arts and crafts into books you have read with the kids?