There is so much to capture from this book! We made a fun week of activities and we want to share them with you to hopefully give you some ideas too!
Apple Art:
We cut open an apple in half horizontally or transverse. We stuck a pop-sicle stick in one of the halves and then my daughter, Ellie, used it as a stamp with paint! We put paint colors of her choice on a plate and she swirled and stamped and made as many pictures as she could! Such a simple, easy, fun activity.
Of course, like the book, we also noted the star inside the apple. We discussed how God designed that apple that way and it was so special. We also observed the seeds and counted them.
Cloud Art:
For this, we had blue construction paper and white paint. Another very simple project. The book notes seeing faces in the clouds. We folded the pieces of paper evenly in half once. We opened them back up with the crease created. I gave the paint to Ellie and let her squeeze as she desired and how much she desired. Then, I showed her how to fold the paper back over and open it again once more. When we opened the paper, we saw how the paint had symmetrically been copied to the other side of the paper making two equal halves (math element). We pretended the white paint was clouds in the blue sky and when opened back up, Ellie would tell me what she saw in the clouds. This was a wonderful way to open her imagination and teach symmetry.
Rainbow Art:
First we discussed what rainbows are. A rainbow is a reflection, refraction, and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting a spectrum of light appearing in the sky. We discussed the specific colors in a rainbow, the proper sequence of the colors, then we practiced that sequence by simply painting our own rainbows. Once she had the concept and the visual, we then went on a nature walk to gather things in nature. This is also in the book. We decided a nature walk to make a rainbow of what we found would be a great way to be an artist! We found red holly berries, red leaves, orange in our southern red clay on rocks and dry pine straw, yellow in dandelions, honeysuckle, and buttercups, green in moss and floor coverings of the woods, blue was found in folios lichen growing on sticks, and indigo violet in flowers and leaves. The nature walk and search alone took two hours because we so thoroughly enjoyed the search and just absorbing the beauty of God's creation. When we came back to the house, we laid out all of our treasures and worked together to form our colorful natural rainbow! This was pretty awesome! We also looked to the scripture, Genesis 9:12-15, where God creates the first rainbow and declares it a covenant with us - a promise.
Sand & Shell Art/ Math:
Tracks in the sand and colors in the shells? We made this happen! Ellie doesn't have a sandbox (yet) so I pulled out a storage container from under the bed, filled it with a $6 fifty lb bag of sand from Home Depot, and placed some of my childhood treasured seashells inside for her. This was a huge hit and incredibly versatile. We made shapes, numbers, and letters (which we are learning phonetically) in the sand. We observed the shapes, colors, and textures of the shells. We counted the shells as a whole group, then we separated and categorized the shells by type and counted the shells per group for math. We listened to the shells and we made tracks in the sand with her toy monster trucks.
Bible Verse:
We always find a verse to go with our book and for this one Ellie memorized Isaish 6:3 - " Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord Almighty, the whole Earth is full of His glory."
