Tall Tales 2014- Zonk, The Dreaming Tortoise

Today's book was Zonk, The Dreaming Tortoise by David Hoobler.   After reading the book, we were set to start our 3 activities.

The first one was a water bottle/soda bottle turtle (Pinterest). The parents brought in water bottles and soda bottles. We had knives and scissors on hand for them to cut the bottom off of the bottle. The children used a tracer (not my preferred choice, but for these summer activities and for the sanity of the parents, I use them) to trace the shape of the turtle onto a piece of foam. This was cut out and then the bottle was glued onto the foam with tacky glue. The children used all of the materials that were left over from yesterday to decorate their turtles (sequins, buttons, yarn, ribbon, scrapbook paper, etc).

The second activity was a turtle made out of a CD (Pinterest). Many of the parents brought their own CD, but we had some on hand for those who did not. They traced the body of the turtle onto a piece of construction paper, cut it out and then glued the CD onto the paper. They decorated the turtles with glitter glue, ribbons, sequins, buttons, yarn, etc.

Our last activity was a watercolor resist (Pinterest). The children drew and colored their turtles with oil pastels and then used liquid watercolors (blue, green and yellow) to create a resist over their drawing.

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Tall Tales in Art- Summer Art Program

I was fortunate enough to be asked to direct a summer art program at our district art museum this year. The theme- Tall Tales in Art. Basically- link art with children's literature. Right up my alley! I do this in my classroom all the time!

Our program was for 6 Tuesdays, from 10:00 until 11:30 am. and I had students ranging in age from 2 years old all the way up to 12 years old. I divided the children into 3 groups: 5 and under, 6 and 7, 8 and up.

The caregivers pretty much stayed with the youngest group, helping them with the scissors, glue, paint, etc. The older groups had a few caregivers with them, depending on whether they had younger siblings with them or not.





 For our first week, we started out by reading the book, Go To Bed, Monster. The entire group of children and adults gathered in a central gallery and I read the book to the entire group.

After that, I showed them examples of what they would be working on. The youngest group made paper plate monsters, using a wide variety of materials (felt, tissue paper, Styrofoam balls that were cut in half for the eyes, pipe cleaners, etc). They highlight for this group every week was GLUE!!!!! 2 year olds and glue, that was all they wanted to do. It was funny to watch the panic on 

 the mom's faces.

The 6 and 7 year olds made water bottle monsters. Again, using a wide variety of materials.

I didn't get any pictures of the 8 and up project. They traced their shoes and made them into shoe print monsters, using crayons, colored pencils and markers.

For our first week, we had about 60 students and probably about 30 adults. It was a full house!

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