Author Fiesta-Jim Arnosky-Animal Tracks

It may not seem it, due to the lack of posts, but the Jim Arnosky Author Fiesta is still going strong around here.

One of the kids favorite books by Jim Arnosky has been Wild Tracks! This contains beautiful Arnosky animal illustrations along with life size illustrations of mostly North American animal tracks,tracks that can be found out and about right here in our neck of the woods.

After enjoying perusing this book for a few weeks, the time came to start some projects.

The first fun activity was to make plaster casts of our own "tracks". I used homemade playdough for the print and then

poured plaster of paris into the prints. I sent Becky on the mission of finding Plaster of Paris since this is NOT one of our normal craft materials. It was easily found in the craft section of Wal-Mart. Twenty-four hours later we had nice casts of some of the kids prints. Two came out perfect-one did not.

We then got out tracing paper to trace our favorite animal tracks out of the Wild Tracks book.
Gracie choose a moose. After tracing the print, she transferred it onto regular paper and then colored it in-concentrating on shading-just like Jim Arnosky does.
We then made tracks of Mark and Grace's feet. We did this in the bathroom, as they sat on the edge of the tub!
making our print
Grace and Mark's tracks.

Our wall display. (Yes, we are almost out of wall space at our home.)

Mark did not choose a North American mammal. He chose a African lion, because it is his favorite. Jim Arnosky included this in the book for size comparison to American cats.

Author Fiesta-Crinkleroot Hats

Keeping in the Jim Arnosky nature theme, and wanting to honor our favorite nature guide, Crinkleroot, I made the four littlest kids "hiking hats". We plan to use them on all of our nature walks, especially this autumn, as we continue enjoying the Author Fiesta.
I planned to have a nature walk today, after reading Jim Arnosky's book, Wild Tracks. We were going to enjoy the predicted sunshine, look for animal tracks, study the autumnal flowers and wildlife. But, the clouds rolled in and a little mist occasionally fell, so we headed to Grandma and Grandpa's house to help clean up their yard after our brush with hurricane Ike.The kids are really enjoying their hats. I used Simplicity #5540 as my pattern. I think they only cost about $3.00 each to make.
We had a frost a few nighs ago, but apparently the frost didn't hit the grapes, because they are still very sour.
Luke worked very hard cleaning sticks up in the yard, he also hasn't taken off his hat, except to sleep, over the past few days.
We did find this funny, upturned mushroom in the yard. Crinkleroot would be proud of our observation skills.
Gracie
"You are supposed to be working, Mark!"
Kimberly takes a break.

Author Fiesta-Jim Arnosky for the littlest

While the older kids are enjoying the nature study that Jim Arnosky encourages, my littlest kids have been enjoying the many books written for our youngest students.Here is a list of Jim Arnosky's books that are suitable for the toddlers among us.

We have been enjoying Crinkleroot's Animals That Every Child Should Know books. Sadly, these books are out of print, but many library systems have them available.
To make this book a little more hands on for Luke and Kimberly, I searched through our animal bucket and found most of the animals featured in the book. We were missing a few of the animals, so I searched around the house and found pictures of the missing mammals.
We looked at the page and named the animal in the book and then looked for the matching animal among the pictures and toys I had set out. During this time we also made the animal's sound and crawled around and acted like the creature.
This also served as a good lesson in taking turns. Something that has to be learned, and learned, and learned. There is nothing worse than a 2 and 3 year old diving on top of each other as they moo like a cow!

Author Fiesta-Crinkleroot

One of our favorite Jim Arnosky characters is his beloved Crinkleroot-Nature Guide. Mary had the great idea to have Crinkleroot serve as a guide for our very own nature exploration. She posted a link to a great printable Crinkleroot that I printed on cardstock, cut it out and taped to a popsicle stick.
Mark, being 8 years old, felt he was too old to carry around a puppet, so he decided he would make sticks marked "good" and "bad", and use them to label things we found outside.
He found garbage on the ground, documented it, and then he cleaned it up!
Crinkleroot found snails and pillbugs,
beautiful goldenrod,

and even took time out to play on the swingset.
Gracie felt that the birdfeeder most certainly should be labeled "good" even though it is out of seed.
A daddy longleg spider and
another spider friend-GOOD
old tin can-BAD

A yummy apple ready to pick
A BAD Dunkin Donut cup
lovely autumn leaves
Crinkleroot found a big turkey feather and shared it with Grace.
I believe that Kimberly is still holding Crinkleroot and looking for nature.

September Author Fiesta-Jim Arnosky

Happy September, and happy Author Fiesta.

We are so happy that this month's author is one of our favorites, Jim Arnosky. His website is loaded with information, included a set of animal coloring pages that we love around here.

I was unable to find a coloring page for our favorite Arnosky character, Crinkleroot, so I put my daughter Amy in charge of creating a drawing suitable for the younger kids to color. Here it is below, click on it, and you should be able to print it out. UPDATE: I guess the link isn't working, so you will have to save the picture to your computer and then print.

If anyone knows how to add a PDF file to a blogger post, please let me know.

Remembering Tasha Tudor

Happy Birthday, Tasha Tudor.

Visit Clarice to see how folks all over are remembering this remarkable woman.

I asked the kids what they thought would be fun to do for her birthday! They recognized how important flowers and animals were to Tasha, in her books, and in her everyday life.

It was also very evident that she was someone who loved the outdoors.
So, following is our day we spent to remember Tasha Tudor.

We certainly wanted to spend a lot of time outside today, so we began the day gathering wildflowers out in the back fields.
These pictures remind be of the beautiful pictures Tasha painted of children doing seemingly regular things. (I just wish we had the Victorian clothing to wear as we were enjoying this special day.)

After gathering our flowers, Amy, Laura, and Danny prepared a wonderful picnic lunch that was enjoyed out under a maple tree.

This does NOT happen very often around here, so it was a great treat for all the kids.
It was so easy though, that maybe it should become a regular occurrence.

After our picnic, I made Tasha Tudor's Daddy's Brownies. These are delicious! I didn't know how they would come out because they didn't have a rising agent, but they were yummy, albeit, flat.

We arranged our wildflowers and began a very festive tea party. (Tasha Tudor loved her tea, we had apple juice.)

Thank you, Grandma, for loaning us a teapot and cups. Kim was puzzled by the fine art of tea drinking. She asked for a straw! Tasha also loved dolls and toys. Notice who Gracie shared tea with.
I am a little embarrassed to admit, this was our first tea party, ever.
Gracie said as we were picking flowers this morning, "Wouldn't it be great is it was Tasha Tudor's birthday everyday!!"

Yes, Grace, it sure would!