Snow Day!

Oh, don't you just remember the feeling? The joy, the freedom! A whole Wednesday with NO SCHOOL, no spelling pre-test, lot's of cartoons, junk food, sleeping in! It's a child's nirvana. And that is exactly what happened this week around here. So, let's relive my three boys' snow day...

We started out the morning with lounging in bed and watching lots of TV then leisurely strolled downstairs for homemade waffles. These are usually reserved for the weekends, what a great day!

Then they constructed a maze out of yarn that encompassed the entire downstairs and up the stairs. Kind of dangerous, it didn't stay up for long, but the fun is in the constructing anyway.

Then out to play in the ice and snow to marvel at glass trees and shovel sidewalks


Then some time spent in the pillow fort (it's the last day and being disassembled as we speak) reading books, The Very Quiet Cricket by Eric Carle. Middle son mentioned a movie they watched about Eric Carle's method of illustration involving tissue paper and paint and a bridge activity was born. You can try this at home.
Introducing my son, The Artist:
Begin by tracing the cricket from a page in the book with a marker (use a thicker paper to protect the page from bleed through)

Place a sheet of tissue paper over the tracing and trace it again with the marker to provide an outline

Using watered down tempera or acrylic paints, fill in the outline using many different colors, letting them bleed into each other. For example, this cricket has several shades of green, but then also has spots of purple and blue and black. The sun also has many shades of yellow and orange. They can't mess it up!

Set the first piece of paper aside to dry, then using another sheet of the same size, begin to paint splotches of greens and yellows using the same technique for the grass. Fill the bottom 1/3 of the paper.

After both sheets of tissue paper have dried, mod podge (decoupage) the "grass" painting to a stiff piece of cardboard. Then, decoupage the "cricket" painting on top of the grass painting. The grass will show through the thin paper and give the illusion that your cricket is sitting among the grasses. For a kid's project, it has great color and depth. Trim the edges after it dries. See?

This is a great bridge activity to reading and makes a whole afternoon out of one book. I think we might make a collection of paintings to go with each of Eric Carle's books!