Spring Craft & Book Time

The bugs featured on today's blog
are courtesy of Nikki Schaefer
http://www.nikkischaefer.com/ from her illustrations for my poem
BUGGY ALPHABETICS.

http://www.cynthiareeg.com/writings/alphabetics.html

Have a fun time with your little critters and help them celebrate the arrival of spring using Eric Carle's book, THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR. This book is filled with one brilliantly colored page after another. An insatiable caterpillar literally eats his way through a week and almost everything else. In end, of course, he changes into a beautiful butterfly.

After reading the book through a time or two with your child, help him create a caterpillar puppet using a white tube sock and permanent markers. Slip a piece of construction paper or tag board inside the sock so the markings don't go through to the other side.
To make the butterfly, use a clothes pin and tissue paper and chenille wire. Here's a link to the San Diego Zoo's Crafts for Kids to show you how: http://www.sandiegozoo.org/kids/craft_butterfly.html

The Zoo Crafts also has another caterpillar craft: http://www.sandiegozoo.org/kids/craft_caterpillar2.html

Or your child might like to make a string of food (that the caterpillar could eat) by clipping photos from magazines or newspaper ads. Punch holes in the foods and then string them up with days-of-the-week name tags interspersed through the pictures.

Other books by Eric Carle that you can share with your child are
THE GROUCHY LADYBUG
THE MIXED UP CHAMELEON
THE VERY BUSY SPIDER

Happy reading and crafting!

Children's Poetry Day

Although today is the first day of SPRING, it has been rather rainy around these parts--as you can tell from Holly's attire.






Today is also CHILDREN'S POETRY DAY. So I've found a spring poem and activity to accompany it. Since we've seen more rain than sunshine this spring, the poem I' ve selected is A RAIN SONG by Evaleen Stein (1863-1923), a poet from Indiana. To learn more about Ms. Stein, click on this link sponsored by Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana: http://www.bsu.edu/ourlandourlit/Literature/Authors/authors_rd3/steine.html


A RAIN SONG
by Evaleen Stein

Tinkle, tinkle,
Lightly fall
On the peach buds, pink and small;
Tip the tiny grass, and twinkle
On the clover, green and tall.

Tinkle, tinkle,--
Faster now,
Little rain-drops, smite and sprinkle
Cherry-bloom and apple-bough!
Pelt the elms, and show them how
You can dash!
And splash! splash! splash!
While the thunder rolls and mutters,
And the lightnings flash and flash!
Then eddy into curls
Of a million misty swirls,
And thread the air with silver, and embroider it with pearls!


To read the entire poem, click on this link at DLTK’S CRAFTS FOR KIDS: http://www.dltk-holidays.com/spring/poem/mstein-rainsong.htm

And for a fun craft, try this bunny all dressed for the rainy spring weather--also from DLTK: http://www.dltk-kids.com/animals/bunny/mbunny-spring.htm

For more rainy day poems, I suggest Candice Leby's book, SPLASH!: POEMS OF OUR WATERY WORLD. She has a great poem using the same theme as Ms. Stein's above but with a very different feel called RAIN, DANCE!

Happy Spring!