Thursday, May 27, 2010

Up, Down and Around (A stART project)


Today, I'm linking with the stART blog hop again.  It's a great way to learn about children's books and see some really great art projects.  We recently read the book Up, Down and Around by Katherine Ayres.  The illustrations by Nadine Bernard Westcott, were very colorful and fun. 


The story is basically about planting a garden and reaping the rewards of it.  This will be our second year of planting a garden and most of us (some of the kids aren't real excited about having to weed it) are pretty excited about growing one.  The book was great and had wonderful art work.


I decided that Nathan's craft should be a scarecrow to go along with the book.   I free-handed the shapes of the clothes, face and hat and cut them out (but I'm sure you could find a template on-line somewhere).  We also used straw, glue, wiggly eyes, craft sticks, coffee, seeds, beads, etc. 


First, we squirted some glue on the bottom of the page and sprinkled coffee on it (to represent dirt). 


Next, we started glueing on the clothes, sticks and hay



We added some embellishments like beads for shirt buttons and glued on some wiggly eyes.


Nathan drew a nose and mouth


And a sun.  He also glued seeds to the "dirt"






Check out....
A Mommy's Adventures for more great projects and children's books.  And join in on the fun!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a fabulous scarecrow. Especially like the "dirt"!! We are planting at the moment and keep meaning to find a nice book on "growing things"! Thanks for the recommendation!

Maggy

Jenny said...

Great scarecrow and dirt. We're going to do some planting soon - I'll see if our library has this. :)

Christianne @ Little Page Turners said...

Adorable! I've seen this book around - we'll have to check it out.

Brimful Curiosities said...

We love this book! Great for teaching about different plants, root vegetables, vines, etc. The scarecrow looks like it took some time to make and turned out wonderful.

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

This is a lovely project! I added the book to Evernote - it sounds very interesting and illustrations are engaging. Thanks for writing about it.

Christy Killoran said...

This book sounds great. I really like your project too. We made scarecrow cookies last fall when we read a few scarecrow books. Scarecrows are fun!

Anonymous said...

He did an amazing job on his project. What a great scarecrow!

Unknown said...

I love your scarecrow. We read this book last week and did a fun movement activity. Please stop by and check it out.