MY FRIEND FROM OUTER SPACE: Book Quilt Square

My Friend From Outer Space: Detail of Quilt made by students and parents at Taft Primary School, Taft, California

One of the most treasured souvenirs of my many author visits to schools through the years is the book quilt made for me by the students and parents of Taft Primary School in Taft, California. One of my favorite squares features one of my most popular fiction books at the time, My Friend From Outer Space (Franklin Watts, 1981), a story inspired by the imaginative games of my own children. I love all the comets in the sky and the candy-striped space ship. (A new version of My Friend from Outer Space has just been published on Amazon in a graphic picture book style. Now children can enjoy this story again!)

Taft Primary School

Well in advance of my visit, students had read a variety of my books.  They then chose a topic or scene from one of the books and made their own drawings which were then transferred to fabric by some very hardworking parents and sewn into a quilt.

Scenes from the Winter Olympics

The visit was made almost thirty years ago, around 1985. I can tell because many of the drawings feature events from The Summer Olympics and The Winter Olympics, books that were published at the time of the 1984 Summer Olympics which were held in Los Angeles.

Some of the other quilt squares feature scenes from my book about giant sequoia trees, The Biggest Living Thing, which was illustrated with my own drawings and printed using pre-separated colors. Every time I get out the quilt, I am not only reminded of the books, but of my wonderful visit to Taft Primary and the tremendous love of books and reading promoted throughout the community.

Scene depicting a page in The Biggest Living Thing

OUTLINING LEAVES: Nature Inspired Art Project for Kids

Every plant has its own kind of leaves. On a recent author visit to Ecole Bilingue in Berkeley, California, I saw some wonderful art projects inspired by leaves that the children had collected. Using different colored pens, the students followed the edges of the leaf, making a series of outlines and creating beautiful designs. Each piece of art was unique, just as the leaves are in nature.

This would be a great activity to do in the fall when leaves are turning colors. But it could be done at any time of year when trees are full of leaves.

DRAW AND WRITE: Fun Family Activities at SFMOMA

Family Activity Guide at SFMOMA 

On my recent visit to SFMOMA in San Francisco to see the Diego Rivera exhibit, I picked up a free brochure at the entrance— DRAW AND WRITE--a family activity guide with suggestions for looking at the art. Each page has room to draw or write in response to the question.  What a great way to engage children visiting the museum and encourage them to think about and interact with the art! The same activities would work well when doing a virtual visit to a museum on the internet.

Here are some examples of the activities in the brochure.

Find something you have never seen before—a color, shape, object, or message. Write what you see here.

A surprise for me was to see Diego Rivera’s studies of hands—which reminded me of the assignment I had in my first life drawing class. The difference was that Diego’s hands were giant—perfect for the large figures of his murals.

Look for an artwork that was made with unexpected or everyday materials. What unexpected materials did you find?

An unexpected material that I found at the museum was a stack of plastic frying pans made into an abstract vertical sculpture, showing that ordinary objects can become extraordinary.

And the most intriguing suggestion was the last:

Write a letter to a piece of art you discovered today. Tell it what you liked the most.

My letter is to a painting by Joan Brown, The Golden Age: The Jaguar and the Tapir (1985).

Dear Painting,

I love your bright colors and the way the tapir and jaguar contrast with the red and green background. You remind me of one of my own pieces of art, an illustration for my book A Day and Night in the Rain Forest. I cut my animals from colored paper and glued them onto the background. That included every one of the jaguar’s spots! I think it would be much easier to paint them as your artist did. And, of course, you are much bigger than the pages of my book. I’m so glad I met you at the museum.

Sincerely, Caroline Arnold

PROJECT: EARTHQUAKE IN A BOX

Illustration for KEEPER OF THE LIGHT by Rachell Sumpter

Juliet Nichols, the lighthouse keeper on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay from 1902 to 1914, is the subject of my book KEEPER OF THE LIGHT (Cameron Kids/Abrams 2022.)

On April 18, 1906, Juliet was woken by a violent earthquake. She wrote in her log:. Calm. Hazy. Severe earthquake at 5:07 A.M. followed by several lighter shocks.

Earthquakes occur when two parts of the Earth’s crust push against one another. To demonstrate what occurs when this happens, you can make a tiny earthquake in a box. (It is best to do this project outside.)

You will need: a shallow cardboard box, scissors, damp sand.

First, cut the box in half. Then put the box back together by overlapping the cut edges. Fill the box with sand. Pat the sand to make it smooth. Now slowly push the two parts of the box together. 

What happens to the sand? Does it form little hills or valleys? Have you made any tiny earthquakes?

BUTTERFLY HAIKU CRAFT PROJECT

Step 1. Haiku

Let a butterfly inspire you to write a short poem called a haiku. There are only three lines in a haiku, totaling 17 syllables. The first line is 5 syllables. The second line is 7 syllables. The third line is 5 syllables like the first.

Here is an example written by my daughter when she was in fourth grade:

Butterfly, graceful,

Fluttering around at day,

Eating pollen grains.

Step 2. Butterfly Cut-Out

You will need a large sheet of black paper, a smaller piece of brown paper, tissue paper, pencil, scissors, glue.

Draw the outline of a butterfly on the black paper. Cut it out.

Draw “windows” in the wings and cut them out. Cut out pieces of tissue paper and glue them to the back of the butterfly. If you like, you can add small pieces of colored paper for decoration.

Draw an oval shape on the brown paper for the butterfly’s body and cut it out. Write your haiku on the body. Glue the body to the center of the butterfly.

Final step. Tape your butterfly haiku cut-out to a window and let the light shine through!

You can learn more about butterflies in my book Butterflies in Room 6.

 

 

ACTIVITY: WRITE A POEM ABOUT YOUR SCHOOL GARDEN

School garden in Planting a Garden in Room 6: From Seeds to Salad (Charlesbridge, 2022)

The children in Room 6 planted a school garden. You can plant a garden too.. 

Let the plants in your school garden inspire a poem. You could write a haiku, a rhyming poem, free verse---or whatever you like.

Here is a new book that will give you some ideas:

BEHOLD OUR MAGICAL GARDEN: POEMS FRESH FROM A SCHOOL GARDEN by Allan Wolf, illus by Daniel Duncan (Candlewick, 2022)

ZOOM VISIT WITH KINDERGARTENERS in Redlands, CA

This morning I had a wonderful virtual visit with Mrs. Huynh’s kindergarten class in Redlands, California. The children have planted a garden and my visit was an opportunity for them to share their gardening project with me and for me to share my new book PLANTING A GARDEN IN ROOM 6 with them.

In two weeks Mrs. Huynh and I will meet in person at the Charlotte Huck Children's Literature Festival in Redlands as we do a joint presentation featuring PLANTING A GARDEN IN ROOM 6 and the hands-on gardening experiences of the children in Mrs. Huynh’s class. We will also share highlights of my virtual visit to her class.

My visit began with me reading the first story in WIGGLE AND WAGGLE, a book inspired by my own gardening experience. They children joined in with their Wiggle and Waggle stick puppets as I read the story and sang the song. I loved their enthusiasm.

I also shared my Peter Rabbit miniature garden, showing it close-up with my computer camera. The kids were delighted to see all the tiny plants and gardening tools.

Then after reading PLANTING A GARDEN IN ROOM 6 aloud and a time for questions, Mrs. Huynh and the children went outside and gave me a tour of their garden boxes where they had planted lettuce, carrots, beans, radishes and other vegetables. It looks like all the plants are off to a good start. They should be able to harvest the first radishes in about a month and some of the other plants too.

At the end of my visit I had time to share my book A ZEBRA’S WORLD. I was pleased to learn that it is part of the curriculum and the children had already read it. I showed them how I made the illustrations for the book. A simpler version makes a great art project for kids. Here's a link to my blog post about doing the zebra art project with Mrs. Best's students at Haynes School. Zebra Stripes Art Project at Haynes School, Los Angeles, CA The template and directions for "Putting Stripes on the Zebra" can be downloaded from my website (the link is in the blog post.) I'm always amazed at how each child makes their zebra unique.

I hope that someday I will be able to visit Mrs. Huynh’s class in person!

 

Miniature Model Garden: Perfect Companion for my new book PLANTING A GARDEN IN ROOM 6

Depiction of Farmer McGregor's garden in the Tale of Peter Rabbit

A miniature garden featuring a scene from the Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter is a treasured gift from my daughter Jennifer.  She made the ground and garden plants from art clay, baking it to make it hard. The fence is made of craft sticks. The figures of Peter and his family—Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail—and of Farmer McGregor were purchased on the internet, as were the tiny garden tools.

The miniature garden is a delightful reminder of my real garden outdoors and working with Mrs. Best and her students on my new book PLANTING A GARDEN IN ROOM 6: From Seeds to Salad. The book will be published in two months, on March 15. I look forward to sharing my miniature Peter Rabbit’s garden with students and teachers as I promote the book after it is published.

Jennifer was inspired to make the miniature garden after our visit to the Flowering Bridge in Lake Lure, North Carolina, last summer, where we saw tiny figures nestled among the plants. See my blog post from September 8,  2021.

MAKE A HODAG SCULPTURE WITH CLAY

Clay sculpture of a Hodag

What creature has the head of an ox, feet of a bear, back of a dinosaur, and tail of an alligator? The HODAG! You can read stories about the Hodag in my books The Terrible Hodag and The Terrible Hodag and the Animal Catchers. (The Terrible Hodag is also available on Kindle in Spanish as El Terrible Hodag.)

The Hodag is the mascot of Camp Bovey, the camp for children and families in northern Wisconsin operated by East Side Neighborhood Services in Minneapolis. 

At the recent Night Under the Stars celebration of Camp Bovey at ESNS, children had the chance to make their own Hodags with clay. 

You can enjoy doing this project too! Remember, that even though the Hodag might look scary, it is really a friendly creature who loves the forest.

 

UKRAINIAN EASTER EGGS

 HAPPY EASTER!

Every year at this time I get out my Ukrainian Easter Egg tools to make new eggs to add to my collection. Using a kistka (a tool with a hollow pointed tip) to apply the melted wax, I draw my designs before dipping the egg in dye. With each succeeding color I add more designs. At the end, I melt the wax on the egg and rub it off, revealing the completed pattern. 

My eggs are an amateur version of the beautiful eggs made by professional Ukrainian egg artists. For more about Ukrainian eggs (pysanky) and how to make them, click HERE.

Note: The Ukrainian Orthodox church will celebrate Easter on May 2, 2021. It is on the Sunday following the paschal full moon, which is the full moon that falls on or after the spring equinox. Orthodox Easter will usually fall later in the year than Western Christian Easter because Orthodox Easter uses the Julian calendar and the latter uses the Gregorian calendar.

Butterfly Craft with Yarn and Pipe Cleaners

With thanks to the Craft Train, here is an easy way to make decorative butterflies with yarn, craft sticks and pipe cleaners. https://www.thecrafttrain.com/woven-craft-stick-butterflies/

Learn about raising real butterflies in my book Butterflies in Room 6: See How They Grow! 

 

Kangaroo Coloring Page

A sulphur-crested cockatoo looks on as a young kangaroo stands up tall and punches with its paws. During play fights, young kangaroos do not hurt one another.
Did you know that an adult grey kangaroo can jump 30 feet (9 meters) in a single bound and leap over a fence 9 feet (2.7 meters) high?  Its long, heavy tail keeps it from tipping forward as it hops. To jump, a kangaroo springs forward on its hind feet.  Inside each leg is a tendon, which acts like a large rubber band.  When the kangaroo lands, each leg bends, and the tendon stretches.  On the next forward leap, the tendon contracts as it snaps back to its resting position.  This pushes the kangaroo forward.
Click here for a downloadable coloring page.  You can find out more about kangaroos in my book A KANGAROO'S WORLD (Picture Window Books, 2008) and in KANGAROO (StarWalk Kids, 2013) downloadable to your Kindle.

STEAM Activity: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? A chicken lays an egg, a chick grows inside, hatches, grows to be a chicken--that lays another egg.  And so on, and so on.

There are many ways to illustrate the repeating process of a chicken's life cycle. In one classroom of second graders at a school in California, the children made a mixed media presentation using packing material to represent the chicken’s nest, real feathers on the growing chick, a hand-print to make an adult chicken, markers for drawing, and googly eyes for all. With black arrows indicating the circular process, it is a dramatic and colorful presentation.

To do this project you will need:
White poster board or heavy paper cut into a large egg shape.
White paper for the eggs.
Yellow paper for the chick.
Colored markers.
Googly eyes.
Feathers.
Packing material for nest.
Red poster paint.

Use the picture above as a guide.
Have fun!

Learn about a chicken's life cycle in my book HATCHING CHICKS IN ROOM 6.

Project: BUTTERFLY SUN PRINTS, a Fun Activity for Kids

Sun prints in the shape of butterflies

In April, I did an author visit at Pilgrim School in Los Angeles as part of the school's Earth Week celebration. Science teacher Kathie Shorkey showed me a wonderful art project she had done with the first graders. Using found objects–ranging from sticks, to buttons, to pop-tabs from drink cans–the children formed the shape of a butterfly on sun print photo paper and then exposed the paper to the sun. The paper was then developed in water and the shape of the butterfly was revealed against a background of blue.

Kathie Shorkey, Science teacher, Pilgrim School, Los Angeles, CA

You can find sun print paper at many sites on the internet or at many science museums. Any object that you can find--natural or manufactured--can be used to make the shadows on the paper.
After arranging your objects on the paper, take your sun print outside and lay it in direct sunlight for 2-5 minutes.
The areas of the paper exposed to the sun will fade from blue to white. When you see most of the color disappear from the paper, your print has been fully exposed. If no direct sunlight is available, don’t worry–just expose your print a little longer and wait for the same fading effect. Under cloud cover, the process will take 5-20 minutes depending on the thickness of the clouds.
After your paper has been exposed, remove the objects and rinse your sun print paper in water. Watch the white turn into blue and the blue turn into white.To get the deepest blue that the paper can give, leave it in the water for a while: 1-5 minutes.
Lay your sun print flat on an absorbent surface and allow it to dry.You can use a paper towel or a piece of cardboard as a bed for your sun print while it dries. Putting it on something absorbent will help to avoid the formation of water spots by drawing the water away from the sun print paper.
A sun print is a kind of photograph called a cyanotype. They are easy and fun to make! Learn more about sun prints at http://www.sunprints.org/how-it-works/ .

KIDS ART ACTIVITY: Inspired by “Butterfly” Compositions by Mark Grotjahn at LACMA

Paintings by Mark Grotjahn at LACMA

An interesting contrast to the David Hockney portraits at the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA is the exhibit in the adjacent gallery of “butterfly” or starburst compositions by Mark Grotjahn. (The actual name of the show is 50 Kitchens–see below.) The colorful paintings, all the same size and with a similar design, are mounted on stark white walls–as opposed to the pomegranate red walls of the Hockney show. Each of the Grotjahn paintings explores a different combination of colors. And when you get close you can see speckles of other colors peeking through.

Choosing favorite colors

On the Sunday afternoon that I visited, two groups of kids were doing activities related to the paintings. After choosing the paintings with their favorite colors, they gathered on the floor with paper, rulers and colored pencils to create their own butterfly designs. As you look at each painting the two halves are mirrors of each other, just like a pair of butterfly wings! It looked like a fun project–for kids or adults!

This painting is symmetrical on the horizontal axis; others are on the vertical axis.

The exhibit ends August 19, 2018.

Los Angeles-based artist Mark Grotjahn (b. 1968) has made “Butterfly” compositions since 2002, and the latest to come out of his studio is 50 Kitchens (2013–18), exhibited here for the first time. Conceived as one work, 50 Kitchens takes its inspiration from a single composition (in black and cream-colored pencil) that Grotjahn made to meet the dimensional specifications of a wall in his kitchen. The more than 50 subsequent chromatic drawings explore pairs of radiating colors (like Tuscan Red and Chartreuse, or Grass Green and Canary Yellow) and together create a prismatic display. The works allude to artists interested in color, light, and optics, such as Wassily Kandinsky and the Op art painters of the 1960s, and also incorporate residual traces of earlier drawings that have been seamlessly integrated into the new works.

SCIENCE PROJECT LAYER CAKE--History of the Earth

My grandson Lucas made an amazing edible work of art for his 8th grade science project - check out the orange skittles fossils, different sedimentary layers, and the volcano with chocolate lava! Also impressive are the informative labels. Thanks, Lucas, for allowing me to share it!

 It turns out you can buy sugar paper and sugar pens! Very handy when your cake requires informative labels.

 Lucas' cake is a definite step up from one of my favorite classroom projects--peanut butter and jelly geology done some years ago at a school I visited. The jelly are the tar pits and pretzels are the fossil bones.

Egg-Citing Activities for Kids, Part 4: Cut-Out Hatching Chick Art Project

Here is a fun and easy activity you can do in conjunction with reading my new book, Hatching Chicks in Room 6. You can make a jaunty chick popping out of its egg with the following downloadable templates, some crayons, stickers and your imagination.
Print the chick design on yellow cardstock. (Directions are included on the printout.)

Print the egg design on white or cream cardstock.

After cutting the crack across the egg, you can slip the chick in and out.
Hint: It is easiest to cut in from the edge of the paper and then use tape to close the cut from the edge of the paper to the egg.

Project: Easter Island Mural

A number of years ago I did an author visit at Mission Avenue Elementary School in Sacramento and saw this wonderful mural of one of the giant Easter Island statues called moai.  It was made by the sixth graders after they read my book Easter Island: Giant Stone Statues Tell of a Rich and Tragic Past. After making a grid pattern on a small photographic image of the moai, each student colored one piece of 9" x 12" paper with the corresponding shapes and colors. When assembled on the wall, the mural depicted one of the moai close to actual size and made an impressive image for everyone in the school to see.

Easter Island is out of print but new and used copies are available on Amazon. You may also be able to find it in your library.

Project: ZEBRA ART with PAPER PLATES

Paper Plate Zebra Mask

On one of my recent school author visits, the room where I was presenting was decorated with charming zebra masks made from paper plates. The project had been inspired by my book A Zebra’s World. I could see that the children had looked carefully at my illustrations to make the zebra’s  markings. They used black construction paper for the nose and mouth and the mane. Stripes on the face were added with black marker. Ears were cut from tan paper and glued to the back of the plate. Googly eyes were added for the final effect. Every zebra was different, just as they are in the wild. This is a fun project to do with younger elementary school students.

A Zebra's World, based on the 2006 book with the same title but now with a shorter text and sturdier pages, brings the story of a zebra's first year to younger readers. Follow the black and white stripes of the young zebra as she grows up in Africa. A readable and lively text provides a close-up look at these black and white animals in this "anything but black and white" book. Cut paper illustrations help tell the tales of these amazing animals and the world in which they live.This picture book follows a baby zebra from birth on the grasslands of Africa through the first year of its life. 

Project: MAKE YOUR OWN FOSSIL

   
You can make a mold of a living object. It will be similar to a real fossil.
     
You will need:
    1. a small paper or plastic cup
    2. wet sand
    3. a small object such as a seashell, nut or leaf (it must fit in the bottom of the cup)
    4. plaster of Paris (you can get this at a hardware store or hobby shop)
    5. water
    6. spoon
    7. bottom half of a milk carton
    8. newspaper

    Spread out the newspaper to catch anything that might spill.  Put wet sand into the cup until it is about half full.  Pat the sand firmly into place.
    Carefully press your object into the surface of the sand.  Lift it out.  You should be able to see an impression of the shape of your object in the sand. 
    Put about a cup of dry plaster of Paris in the milk carton.  Add water and stir until the mixture is about the thickness of heavy cream.   (Add water a little bit at a time until you have enough.)  Make sure that there are no lumps in your plaster of Paris mixture. 
    Pour the plaster of Paris mixture into the cup.  Leave it for an hour or so to harden.  When it is hard, peel away the paper cup and throw away the sand.  You will see the shape of your object in the plaster. 
    You made your fossil in a few hours. In the Earth, it takes thousands of years for fossils to form

You can read about real fossils and their living counterparts in my new book LIVING FOSSILS: Clues to the Past.