For January and February in the Reading Together: Family Exploration Book Club, we're reading and discussing books about the Arctic. (By the way, it's not too late to join us if you're interested!)
The picture book we picked is called In Arctic Waters, and it's a cute book all about the creatures who live in arctic waters, including a beluga, a narwhal, a walrus, and a polar bear.
Juliet's been obsessed with seals for a while now, ever since we saw on in the bay when we were in San Francisco last year. So she was immediately pretty engaged. I wasn't really sure how to make a seal craft though, and it seemed like a polar bear was more promising. A quick Pinterest search pulled up several posts, where I learned that you can make homemade puffy paint by mixing equal parts shaving cream and white glue. (!!) So I quickly pulled together a few supplies, and we whipped up a super cute polar bear. The craft itself only took 10 minutes. Plus supply-gathering and hand-washing afterward, it was about 20 minutes all together.
Here's what we used:
- 1 paper plate
- a cup for mixing our "paint" (equal parts shaving cream and white glue)
- about 3 TB each shaving cream and white glue (I just eyeballed it)
- a straw, as our "paintbrush", since I didn't want to destroy an actual paint brush
- 3 pom-poms - two white for the ears, one black for the nose - you could also use circles of construction paper
- 4-5 cotton balls
- 2 googly eyes
I helped Juliet mix the paint, and then let her apply it to the backside of the paper plate. Then she put on the pom-poms for the ears and nose, and applied the googly eyes. (Then I re-positioned the googly eyes, haha.) Then I gave her a handful of cotton balls, and showed her how to rip them into little shreds. This was by far her favorite part of the craft. She happily shredded them, and stuck them all over the paint, to make a cute and fuzzy bear!
Then we read the book again, with her putting the polar bear up over her face every time the polar bear was mentioned. I'd call this a book club win!
Eleanor and I have been reading the middle-grade choice aloud in the evenings. We're both really liking The Year of Miss Agnes so far, but since we're not done, I didn't want to totally review it. But my co-hosts for this subject, Carrie from The Lion is a Bookworm, and Sheila from The Deliberate Reader, will be sharing their Arctic and Miss Agnes thoughts too. And I'm sure some of the other RTFEBC will be linking up their own posts, so be sure to check them out!
Did YOU know how to make homemade puffy paint?
If you're interested in learning more about the Arctic - our YA pick is Julie of the Wolves. In the past I've also reviewed the surreal Arctic novel Fram, and the fascinating nonfiction book Arctic Obsession: The Lure of the Far North.
