Eric Carl Book Week

So we are down to the last few weeks of this deployment, and can I just say, these last few days are DRAAAAAAAAGGINGGGGGG. I have seriously run out of things to clean. Not to mention our weather went from beautiful, sunny 60s to grey, rainy 40s. The summer fakeout is the worst ever. We spent every day for weeks soaking up the rays at our favorite parks, feeding the duckies at our pond, playing in our sandbox, and cramming our flower beds full with tons of flowers, but the last 4 days we have been stranded inside. Any of you who have a 3 year old know the pain of staying inside for days on end. 

In an attempt to keep both Emma and I busy, I have added week-long book projects to our school times in the morning. We have been working on letters and numbers as well as just strengthening Emma's writing hand with some good old fashioned coloring, but we needed something exciting to look forward to. So after scouring Pinterest and Google for ideas, I came up with a rough list of several books with projects that went along with them. 

My love for books defintely originated with my Mom, her house is a library in every room, and thanks to her, I'm  obsessed with the classics. The Little House, Katy and the Big Snow, Dr. Seuss, Jesse Bear What Will You Wear, Harry the Dirty Dog just to name a few. Emma already has quite a collection of books in her room which have recently into the playroom, so coming up with books for our projects only entailed me walking into Emma's room. 

Our first book week I picked Eric Carl's The Very Hungry Catepillar, and the projects I found were adorable. 

Our first project was the butterfly version of something one of my friends did for St. Patty's Day with her daycare kids. I started off by cutting two sheets of contact paper into pieces about 12x18. Next I traced a rough shape of a butterfly on the top of one of the sheets so the outline could be seen when we laid the paper sticky side up. Next Emma helped me peel the backing off the paper and tape it sticky side up to the table. Emma  had helped me cut itsy bitsy pieces of colored tissue paper earlier so we had quite a stack of colors. Then we stuck the tissue all over the butterfly shape, trying our best to keep the tissue inside the outline.

All that was left after that was to put the second sheet of contact paper on top, make a black paper outline for the whole butterfly, glue some googly eyes on and add a pipecleaner for an antenna. She was so excited to hang it in the window and see the sunshine make his wings light up. 

Tuesday was our egg carton catepillar project that I found on Pinterest. Here's the link to the blog from PInterest that I found several of my catepillar crafts on: 

http://www.momto2poshlildivas.com/2012/05/childrens-book-week-share-your-favorite.html

Emma was really excited about the project since she got to paint. This project took two days to complete since my little munchkin was pretty generous with the paint. She painted up the front section with red then we painted the back part green to match the catepillar on the front of the book. (Emma's request) After drying overnight, we stuck some neon green pipe cleaners on for legs, and Emma drew the eyes on and voila! Awesome catepillar!

I'm still deciding on what book we are going to use next week. Emma has requested If You Give A Pig A Party by Laura Numeroff, now the race for me to come up with 5 ideas/projects is on!