March is reading month, and we LOVE to read books and go to the library. So in honor of reading month, Helping Little Hands is having a Read-Along. I love this idea, as I've seen some books that other people have posted for the read-along that I have not heard of before and will be reading and crafting along with. Everything looks like so much fun! Check out what other ideas have been posted!
I chose the book Surprise Soup by Mary Ann Rodman. My kids love this book and we check it out from the library a lot. Surprise Soup is about the displacement of a middle child and trying to get his family to listen to him. Kevie, the little brother for now, is trying to help make soup for supper because his Mom is on the way home with his new little brother. He gets teased by his big brother for different things, one of them being that he wants to put a secret ingredient in the soup, but he keeps on pluggin' and in the end he saves the soup. When he gets to meet his little brother, he cuddles with him and tells him he'll teach him things because "little brothers know things." It is a very cute story about siblings and the sweetness that parents get to witness once in awhile between them.
I know the obvious project for this book would be to make the soup that they made. My kids love to help me cook, but they won't eat soup with beans very well....I try...a lot. So I wanted to do something that they would enjoy because they love this book and I decided to let them paint with the foods that the cubs put in the soup in the book.
This is our plate of food to paint with. We used celery, beans and potatoes that I cut shapes out of. We also used carrots because we had some.
V is trying out the celery, rolling it back and forth to make a long line.
R using the carrot to make a smoother line.
Stamping with potatoes.
Using beans to make little dots.
When the older two started using the veggies to paint, E just looked at them as if to say, 'What are you guys doing with those? You're crazy! Those are for eating.' So she opted for a paint brush!
R using beans to make dots of beans in her soup painting.
R's finished pot of soup and spoon painting. Very creative I thought!
Then things moved from using veggies to using their hands and that's when things get really messy and kind of out of control so it was time to be finished!
Here's what out veggies looked like after all of the painting. Very colorful! I think I'm going to hang up some of their paintings in some old frames that I have laying around. I love to decorate my house with things that my kids make. Check out Helping Little Hands' blog. She has some very cute ideas.
Keeping Things Fun!
Jess
