Artistic endeavors

I've been meaning for months to post about some of the fun art and activities we do: finger painting, painting with brushes, making prints, coloring and stickers, sensory trays, felt boards, puppet shows, etc. Here's one we did today - a great literature connection!

One of Abraham's favorite books (and mine, I will admit) is Little Pea. I bought this book for him before he was born. Basically, it's about a pea who hates candy, but has to eat it every night before he can have his dessert...which is spinach! Very cute, and the illustrations are great. So we have read this book a lot and all have it memorized at this point. I wanted to do something to go beyond the story*, so I thought of creating a felt storyboard. Abraham has an ocean felt board I created that he really likes, so I figured this would go over well too. Here is how it turned out:

Litte Pea felt storyboard

This was so easy and cheap to make. Felt pieces are 29 cents at Michaels, and most of this came from pieces I had already bought. Then I just free-handed the drawings based on the book. I'm sure these would be a little better if I were a better artist, but hey, they work for us! You can see the Pea family (Little Pea actually has a sad/angry face on the back for when he has to eat his candy), all the different types of candy, the bowl of spinach, the spoon that Papa Pea uses to fling Little Pea high in the air, and the hill that Little Pea likes to roll down. Abraham really liked watching me actually make all the pieces. He got so excited when each piece was done. I let him color his own piece of candy too, which you can see up there. Then we sat down and I told him the story from memory, adding and moving pieces on the board as needed. Big hit! Now we'll see if he plays with this on his own and tells the story himself.

*Besides, ahem, using the example of Little Pea to get Abe to eat things he is not fond of...and peaking his interest in spinach.