Hey, Or So She Says readers! It’s Brooke from Blissful Roots. How was your 4th of July weekend? Fun, and festive, I hope! Ours was a bit unusual in that we spent the 4th packing, and then left for Arkansas the next day for our sweet nephew’s funeral. I blogged about Ben at Blissful Roots a few times. He had been fighting leukemia and then dealing with a failing heart on top of that for the past several months. He was so strong and brave during his battle! We miss him terribly, but are so grateful he’s not suffering any more, and that we know we’ll see him again some day.
Anyway, on with today’s post. I’m sure if you’re not sick of hearing it by now, you might be soon, but I pulled this children’s book and activity from my first grade teaching files. I’ve been wanting to share it for quite some time, and finally have gotten around to it. It’s the perfect activity for a lazy (or bored) summer day, and you can actually add to it all summer long!
Source
This is the book you’ll need. It’s called A House is a House for Me (click here to listen to it on YouTube). Have you heard of it? If not, it’s one you need to add to your collection as soon as possible. It talks about all of the different houses in our world. A hill is a house for an ant, a web is a home for a spider, the sea is a house for a whale, a husk is a home for a corn cob, etc. So many clever ideas in this book! It makes your children (and you!) realize how many things house things in our world. Does that makes sense?
After reading the book, then you can have your children come up with their own ideas of different houses and what lives in them. I usually make the rule that their idea can’t be one used in the book. I love to see what they can come up with on their own! Here’s what my seven-year-old twins and my four-year-old came up with.
Notice the bellybutton. That was his favorite part!
Lots of swiss cheese. He doesn’t think you can draw cheese without holes in it.
He was a bit worried his seed was bigger than the flower, but not bad at all for a four-year-old!
So, after reading the book, have your kids come up with his/her own idea of what houses something. Then have them draw it on the house, or use a piece of card stock glued to the house like I did, and write the sentence. I love, love, love hearing what my boys come up with! So many creative ideas!
Here’s the house template we used. It is a bit small, especially because I cut a piece of white card stock to go on the house, which made the picture even smaller than the house. You could draw right on the house, use a bigger house, have your kids draw the house, or whatever you’d like. I kind of like the size I used here because they’re not too huge, and we could put a collection of them together banner-style, or hang them on the wall. You could also make your own family book of all the ideas you come up with.
You can click here for a link to print the house template I used. The link will take you to my Kids Pinterest Board, and then you can drag it to your desktop and print it from there. I tried and tried to find the exactly link on 0to5.com.au for the house, but could never find the house template on their site, but it did come from there.
Thanks so much for letting me take a bit of your time today. If you’re in need of a few more summer ideas, I have a killer indoor s’more recipe, our favorite How To Draw books that have kept my boys busy so far this summer, and great shaving cream and food coloring art activity that will amaze you! See you next month!