stART--Ten Apples Up on Top--and yarn apples

stART

A Story + Art= A Great stART

I found this new weekly theme at A Mommy's Adventure and thought that "this is something we are already doing"!

What you do, is to share a story with your little ones and then do an art project inspired by the book.

This week we have been enjoying apples, and the especially the book:

Ten Apples Up on Top

For our art activity to go along with this book we made yarn apples.

I saw this at one of my favorite craft sites: Make and Takes. At this site you will find very clear and easily understood directions for these cute apples---much better than I could produce.

All you need for these are:

yarn

pipe cleaners

heavy cardboard

We cut a piece of cardboard about 2 1/2 inches thick. We then wrapped yarn around the cardboard. About 100 times around made a nice sized apple. Cut the yarn off leaving a little tail.
Bend the cardboard slightly to get the pipe cleaner under the top half of the yarn. Wrap the pipe cleaner tightly around the yarn. Make sure to check out Make and Takes because their direction are much clearer than mine.
Repeat this process on the bottom of the apple. Make the top into a stem and add a little green pipecleaner leaf.
On the bottom, tightly twist the pipecleaner and then trim and bend the pipecleaner into the bottom on the apple making a little "apple blossom" spot.

I think we made ten apples in about 15 minutes.

Perfect for the book, Ten Apples Up on Top.

The kids also enjoyed making apples with peanut butter this afternoon for a snack while I read the story for the, uuummmm, 100th time.

We tried to see how many apples we could get "up on top". For most of us, it was only one, and the child that did manage to get 2 to stay on his head, wasn't fast enough to get his picture taken.

It takes a lot of concentration to keep an apple on your head and read a book at the same time, as Luke found out.

They were actually happy to try and keep real apples on their heads, even though this picture makes most of them look like it was agony, or maybe that is just concentration!

Gracie then took over reading and had some of her "friends" help out in the "apples on their heads" role.

Who's is stuffed and who is real?

Seven apples on top seemed to be the record. I think we might need a bigger couch to achieve "Ten Apples Up on Top"