April 21

I have fallen in love with wordless books. I decided to share a few books I found at the library that are awesome and beautifully illustrated.

One illustrator is Bill Thomson who has just two books: Chalk and Fossil. These two are our favorites by far. My boys ask me to read and reread them over and over again. This is actually the second time we checked out Chalk. I saw it was discounted about half off on Amazon for the hardback version so I went ahead and bought it. I'm so excited for it to come and for the boys to realize that it is ours now!

This book is on sale for short time (hardback, $8): Amazon
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I found this other book done by graphic design teacher at BYU-Idaho (my alma mater) Scott Franson so I was really excited to get that. It's a cute story and the graphics are pretty neat.

This next one's author/illustrator is pretty well known, though this was my first exposure to him. Flotsam  is by David Wiesner and the watercolor images are fantastic. Of course the story is pretty neat too of a boy who finds an old steampunk like camera with some fascinating images captured.

The other books I had were The Lion and Mouse by Jerry Pinkney (a "telling" of Aesop's fable) and Flashlight by Lizi Boyd.

This book club we just played outside for a bit before coming in "reading" a couple of the books.

March 30

Amanda helped us start planting a couple of vegetables and shared planting, spring time books. I had to leave before they got started but here's a picture of Jacob's planted peas and carrots. Thanks, Amanda!

April 14 - Music theory

Catherine brought music to our book club today with two books: Hand, hand, fingers, thumb by Al Perkins and Dancing Feet by Lindsey Craig. The kids loved to bang the drums and other homemade musical instruments. Catherine had a clever treat for us: drums and drumsticks (stick pretzels and banana chunks!)

Thanks Catherine! Those were great ideas.

March 24

Today, Carolyn introduced us to author Jan Fearnley who wrote several books such as "Martha in the Middle" and "Mr. Wolf and the Three Bears." She read to us as a group "Watch Out!" - something we all could relate to. Then we enjoyed a fun obstacle course around the gym that Carolyn prepared.

Thanks, Carolyn!

And I forgot to take pictures during the obstacle course. I was having too much fun myself :).

St. Patrick's Day - March 17

Our inaugural children's book club happened to land on St. Patrick's Day and Holly was enthusiastic and willing to fill in for Amanda.

Holly read a story of Irish lore (leprechaun based, of course) and had the kids join in with a song about shamrocks. Her activity was simple enough of coloring shamrocks and placing St. Patrick's Day themed-stickers on paper. The kids loved it, especially the mustache stickers.

Sorry - only picture I had access to. Photo courtesy, Sarah's mom.

We enjoyed a rainbow of fruit and water for our snacks.

Thanks, Holly! It was perfect!