Moon books

Our moon books are made of different bits of black and silver paper, with some graph paper and photocopy paper thrown in the middle for drawing. I cut them on my small guillotine, creased them and sewed them down the middle on my sewing machine.

We have gone out every night to check on the moon. It felt like such an exciting adventure, to be out in the back yard, at night, in the dark, looking for the moon with Tom's telescope. Usually at this time we are deep in the midst of dinner, bath/shower time, bed time - but not these school holidays ...

BUT ... it has been so cloudy, that we have not seen the moon! Not once! So while the kids have sketched the backyard in darkness, and noted the day and time, and researched moon phrases and star facts on the internet, it was not quite enough.

So today, on the last day of school holidays, we went to the Scienceworks Planetarium, and we did indeed see the moon and many stars, and said hello to this floating astronaut! We watched the short film 'Tycho to the moon' and then listened to and watched a show about the moon and constellations.

The kids loved it, and it felt like a fitting finish to our moon week - or lack thereof! I think we'll have another go at moon watching in the September holidays.

Some of the books we enjoyed reading this week were:

* Fancy Nancy sees stars by Jane O'Connor
* When the moon smiled by Petre Horacek
* How to catch a star by Oliver Jeffers
* Where on earth is the moon? by Ruth Martin
* Draw me a star by Eric Carle
* Man on the moon (a day in the life of Bob) by Simon Bartram
* The sea of tranquility by Mark Haddon
* When you wish upon a star sung by Judy Collins, illustrated by Eric Puybaret

I also gained many ideas from Mariah Bruehl's book 'Playful Learning'. She has some fabulous projects.

A classic school tale

'I'm not interested in creating a book that is read once and then placed on the shelf and forgotten. I am very happy when people have worn out my books, or that they're held together by Scotch tape.'
Richard Scarry

Richard Scarry is a writer and illustrator from my childhood, and his books are definitely classics to keep. His annotated pictures offer plenty of opportunities for young readers to pore over the details and to make the connection between the pictures and the words.

'Great Big Schoolhouse', another school story for my school series like this one and this one, tells the story of Huckle, a young cat. Huckle rides the school bus, learns something new every day from Miss Honey, his teacher, plays in the playground with his friends (remember Lowly Worm, anyone?), learns the alphabet, counts to ten, learns how to tell the time and the months of the year, among many other things.

This book is fabulous for encouraging kids to look at books by themselves, as the labels for all the different objects make it easy for 'pretend' reading aloud. There's also lots of humour in the story and illustrations.

Autumn leaves for art and story-telling

It is Autumn in Melbourne, and the weather in the past week has definitely left Summer behind - even though the forecast for the next few days will make a liar out of me!

So thanks to a leaf template from Alphabet Glue, Volume Three, this week I made an Autumn tree for our pinboard - the same pinboard that was covered in this a year or so ago.

Sometimes it's fabulous to create a new project alongside the kids - other times it's great to put it all up and surprise them. This one was a surprise - the big kids came home one day from school and found this ...

And then they promptly added their own touch to it - which was exactly what I wanted!

Annie at Alphabet Glue suggested using these leaf templates as bunting to showcase your child's story. I decided to use the leaves to create an ongoing story, written a leaf at a time, by anyone who felt like it. I used brown packaging paper for the tree and odd bits of scrapbook paper for the leaves. I pinned the blank leaves to the tree, and then used string and pegs to attach the 'story' leaves as they are written.

Our story so far includes a tree, an alien and a paper plane - who knows where it will finish?

Settling into school books

I thought I'd do a little series on settling into school, for all the little ones beginning school and for any anxious older ones. It is always comforting to know that others have gone before you, and have faced similar situations, regardless of whether you are a cat or a witch's child. In fact, sometimes the more fantastical the setting or character, the less 'preachy' or moralistic the story.

In this story,"The witch's children go to school" by Ursula Jones, the witch's children don't really go to school, but they meet Gemma who is about to have her first school day. But only if she is brave enough to move past the Class Three kids.

The oldest child of the witch has an idea - and uses a spell to change Gemma into an ogre, "because ogres aren't scared of anyone." The fun begins now - all teachers, caretakers, students and animals are turned one by one into a storybook creature - so that Gemma the ogre does not feel so alone.

The witch's children get a little carried away, and haven't learnt enough about spells to change anyone back.

"Now we've got trouble," mewed the school cat.

The only person who can help is Mum! So the witch's children summon Mum.

And the Eldest One shouted, "I've lost my pants."
"I can't find my dress," the Middle One wailed.
And the Little One yelled, "Where are my socks?"

Mum not only knows where the missing clothes are, but she knows how to turn the ogre, the storybook, the dancing princesses, the tiger, the swans, the gingerbread men and all the other storybook people back into students, teachers and the school cat.

Russell Ayto's illustrations are hilarious - there are definitely no traditionally scary witchy figures here at all. Lots of bright colours and active characters. My favourite double page spread is the one with the three open-mouthed children, shouting for Mum.

It was a bit like that at 5.30pm in our house today!

Christmas lanterns and Santa sacks - days 7 and 8

Oops, missed yesterday - too much going on! Yesterday we were going to make Christmas lanterns like these ones but there was too much basketball and playdough happening. Another day. But our willow branches are starting to look lovely with the Advent stars hanging on them.

Today we pulled out the Santa sacks, one for each of us. I bought the plain bags a few years ago from Andrea at Flora and Ceres and embroidered our initials.

Setting up the nativity - day 6

Today we read Martin Waddell's "Room for a little one", one of my favourite Christmas stories. The story and the illustrations are gentle, and my kids enjoy hearing the traditional story of the nativity told from the animals' viewpoint. We are always repeating the title, "There's always room for a little one here!" as someone tries to squeeze in on the couch or find a spare knee!

The Christmas star in the Advent calendar for today suggested we should set up our nativity. When my Grandad died about eight years ago, Mum gave me his old nativity set. We set it up for a few years but each year another piece would literally crumble in our hands. So a couple of years ago we bought a beautiful wooden set from Honeybee Toys. We use the kids' farmhouse as the stable, and today they pulled out the fairy/farm playmat I made for them a couple of years ago. (Not really sure how many fairy flower rings there were in Bethlehem!) Tom found our farmhouse animals and aded them to the stable too, even the wonky sheep.

When we chose our wooden nativity set, I wanted one that the kids could play with, one that wasn't precious or just for looking at on a high shelf. Annalise made up her own nativity story - Mary, Joseph and Jesus were lost by our windowsill - but, wait, wait for it - their guardian angel came flying, flying, flying all over the family room until she found them and showed them the way to the stable.

I hope Grandad would approve of this modern version ...

Little Christmas tree - day 5

Keeping it simple today - we found a place for the little Christmas tree.

Christmas carols - day 4

Twenty minutes last night searching for the Christmas CD. One minute to put it in the CD player. Thirty seconds for the kids to open the fourth window in the Advent calendar this morning. One second for me to press play. Voila - our Christmas carols!

Christmas wreath - day 3

Our Christmas wreath is very simple - a green one with a big red bow and a stem of red berries wrapped around it. We had good intentions to hang it on the door today, but a family birthday kept us busy. So here leans our wreath, on the hall table, about three feet away from the front door. Maybe tomorrow ...

Lighting the Christmas candle - day 2

Annalise opened the Advent calendar window this morning - and there was an invitation to light the Christmas candle. We did light it for breakfast this morning but we will light it for dinner every night and perhaps for bedtime stories. The scent is divine!

Christmas Advent calendar - day 1

Last year we did something a little different with our Advent calendar. Instead of filling it with the usual lollies, chocolates and small treats, I placed a cardboard Christmas shape with a string for hanging and a message. The message gave the kids an idea for doing something Christmasy.

This year, we're going to do the same, and I'm going to blog about it each day. (Is that a little ambitious - a blog post every day in December? A December which already seems to be filled to the brim with family birthdays and end-of-year gatherings?) Wish me luck!

I have already cut out star shapes using a Christmas biscuit cutter, and hole-punched them with a string for hanging. My three kids will take it in turns to open a box in the Advent Calendar each day (thank goodness 24 is divisible by 3!) and can then hang the star on our willow branches in a vase. I have written all the Christmas ideas on the stars, with a few blanks for flexibility. Some of the ideas are very simple, so we can do them in five minutes before school. Other ideas are for more leisurely weekend crafting.

I am hoping this will spread out the Christmas cooking, decorating, eating, crafting and giving, and build up - in a gentle way - the Christmas excitement.

This was all inspired by Madeleine L'Engle's "The twenty-four days before Christmas". I loved her book "A wrinkle in time" and have recently read her wonderful series for young teenagers about the Austin family. This Christmas book is about the Austin family but can be read as a story alone and is suitable for younger readers. Vicky, the main character who tells the story, is seven. I'm planning on reading the first chapter to my bunch tonight - although it might turn out to be a book just for Tom (nearly eight).

I'd love to hear what you are doing for Advent!

BIG kids magazine

BIG kids magazine is here - a fabulous magazine for kids which values the art of children alongside that of artists. I have been lucky enough to be involved with BIG as a copy editor - a wonderfully creative collaboration with Jo and Lilly. But even though my kids have seen the magazine in draft form and enjoyed some of the activities when they were still in proof form, they were so thrilled to see and hold the 'real' magazine!

So far we have built boat parts, cooked artcakes, coloured in the artprint, shown our bird's nest photo featured in the miniature art gallery, painted birds outside and read the 'First Flight' story over and over again! And there is still a lot more to discover!

One of my favourite things about BIG is that for every copy sold, another copy is provided to a child who may not usually have access to such a resource.

I am also enjoying our conversations about exactly what bravery, imagination and generosity means ...

The second issue will be available in February.

Jo and Lilly interviewed me on their BIG blog - please go and visit!

Our awesome books

I had heard about this book by Dallas Clayton, "An Awesome Book" but had never been able to track it down. Bookshops told me it would be available in March 2012. But I knew that it had actually been published! It wasn't until Katie and Lou at We heart books explained to me that Dallas had self-published his book, but had subsequently signed a contract with Harper Collins to publish "An Awesome Book" with them. A-ha!

Luckily for me, Katie and Lou have limited copies at their online bookshop, We heart books. They also have a wonderful selection of really unique and special books. Such good quality and so many books I had never heard of - and I do spend a fair bit of time in the children's section of bookshops! I bought a couple of fabulous books for Annalise's birthday from them - that's for a later post - and they arrived immediately, beautifully presented.

Once Tom, Annalise and I had read "Awesome", we dreamed a dream as big as big could ever dream to be ... and we made our own awesome books! I spent an hour one night, writing the prompts for their blank books, based on the ideas in Dallas' book, and left them out on the table for them to discover in the morning. The photos tell the rest of the story. (The food in the last photos were to make magic watermelon boats ... maybe ours weren't magical but they were certainly edible!)

Tom's dream is to be a fabulous basketball player. I would suspect Annalise dreams of being a princess. When I was small, I told Dad my dream was to be a Mummy and an Avon lady ... so far, I've only achieved one of my childhood dreams ...!

If anyone would like a list of the awesome prompts I wrote for our books, please contact me and I can email you the list. You can also go into a draw to win a copy of "An Awesome Book" by responding to the launch issue of BIG magazine - more on this wonderful new magazine soon!

Alphabet Glue and Monet

I recently came across an art and literature magazine for kids - via BIG Kids magazine - which just made my heart sing! Alphabet Glue is created by Annie Riechmann, of Bird and Little Bird blog. It's an affordable, downloadable magazine which you can print out - there are two issues available now. We made three activities within three days of reading them!

Alphabet Glue includes suggested reading lists for kids, print-outs for library catalogue cards, bookmarks, reading records and story cards, as well as instructions for book-making projects and detective activities.

Our story lanterns were based on Laurence Anholt's "The Magical Garden of Claude Monet". We loved the idea of a circular studio room. Monet tells Julie, his young visitor that he is trying to paint the most enormous water garden in the world. When you stand in the middle, you will feel as if you have dived into a pool. 

There is factual information about Monet at the end of the book. Annalise's favourite page - below - opens out to present Monet's pond. The brush marks glowed like flowers in a garden. This picture book is quite long - more for younger primary school students than kinder kids - you might need to turn it into a "chapter" book and read it in two or three sections for small ones.

Laurence Anholt has written a series about famous artists and his books tell a lovely story, while giving seemingly incidental snippets about the artists. Anholt illustrated all of these artist books - imagine being able to imitate the artistic style of not only Monet but Picasso, van Gogh, Degas and Matisse as well!

Tom used a jungle theme for his lantern, Annalise a garden. Annie's instructions were simple to follow, and the kids feel really proud of their lanterns, especially as we leave them on the table and light them for dinner.

Thinking these might make fabulous Christmas gifts for those special grandparents and teachers ...

The best blueberry recipe

On this first day of Autumn, I am looking back wistfully to summer's blueberry bounty to bring you our favourite blueberry recipe and our favourite blueberry book. Yes, of course, there is a blueberry book - 'Blueberry Girl' by Neil Gaiman!

It is the perfect present for a baby girl, or a girl of any age really. Who doesn't need to be blessed like this: Grant her the wisdom to choose her path right, free from unkindness and fear.

Or perhaps like this: Truth is a thing she must find for herself, precious and rare as a pearl. Give her all these and a little bit more ... gifts for a blueberry girl.

I love how the blueberry girl - a different looking girl throughout the illustrations - is watched over by ladies of light and ladies of darkness and ladies of never you mind. (Annalise and I love to say that line aloud - go on, say it aloud for yourself!)

The story is a prayer, a wish for the unborn daughter of the author. One of the first illustrations by Charles Vess is of a pregnant woman.

Whether you picture your daughter or your six-year-old neighbour or your sixteen year-old niece, this is a beautiful book to read aloud to a special girl.

And this is a beautiful recipe to share! This scone is meant to look rustic and to be devoured within minutes. We have cooked it twice this week for friends - it is best served immediately so I tend to cook it when I invite friends and family to our place. It is also a child-friendly recipe - both in the cooking and eating! And while my daughter is the one most interested in cooking, it is my two blueberry sons who always ask for second helpings of this dish!

Blueberry Scone (adapted from a recipe by Bill Granger from an old Delicious magazine)

Ingredients
250g plain flour
1 tbs caster sugar
2.5 tsp baking powder
100g unsalted butter, chopped
2 eggs, lightly beaten
125 ml cream
100g blueberries, tossed in a little bit of flour
an extra egg, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Line a baking tray with baking paper.

Add the sifted flour, sugar, baking powder and a pinch of salt to the food processor and pulse briefly. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture becomes coarse crumbs.

Tip the mixture into a bowl and carefully mix in the 2 eggs and cream - don't overmix the batter. Gently stir in the blueberries.

Turn the dough onto the baking tray and mound into a circle, about an inch and a half high. (It is better to go flatter rather than taller so your scone doesn't burn on the outside while still gooey inside).

Divide the scone into 8 wedges with a knife but don't cut all the way to the bottom. Brush with the extra beaten egg. Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden. Serve immediately with butter. Enjoy!

"Come over to play at the Childhood 101 We Play link up."

Castle stories

Knights, princesses and dragons - it doesn't matter how old you are, castle playing is always fun. Our wooden castle has seen several jousts, medieval quests and rescues. Many a dragon has been spotted flying overhead or sneakily lurking around the turrets. The king and queen have told their stories and been entertained in turn. The valiant knights have shown remarkable chivalry. Horses have galloped through the drawbridge, just before it has been pulled up. Occasionally a lego figure or a zoo animal finds its way along the musty corridors, and the knights merely nod in passing.

One of our favourite knight stories is "Small Knight and George" by Ronda Armitage. Small Knight is told by his dad:

that it is time for Small Knight to have his first suit of armour and his first horse and his first shield and his first sword and to go out to fight his first fierce dragon.

But Small Knight doesn't even know what a dragon looks like, let alone how to fight one. Small Knight didn't feel big and brave; he felt little and frightened.

On his journey he meets several people who answer his request for a fierce dragon sighting with the same phrase - "Don't talk to me about fierce dragons ... are you sure you want to fight a very fierce dragon?"

Of course, our small hero's confidence wanes with every negative conversation. Finally he meets a small displaced creature whose home has been taken over by fierce dragons. Together they turn back home to the castle, to be met by frightened shrieks. Can you guess why?

Lots to love about this book - fabulous repetitive phrases, encouraging story of feeling brave and facing your fear and detailed pictures of castle life by Arthur Robins.

It doesn't matter how many stories of brave knights or fierce dragons you have heard - kids are very good at imagining their own tales of quests and adventures!

"Come over to play at the Childhood 101 We Play link up."

Seven steps to create your own art gallery

Your own art gallery might sound ambitious but with a few children, twenty minutes before dinner, a couple of hot weather days (or rainy days), you will be charging admission prices before you know it!

1. Visit a gallery
During the school holidays, we visited the Heide Museum of Modern Art. We were all impressed by an exhibition called Freehand: Recent Australian Drawing.

2. Clear the walls
 Then we came home to our empty pinboard, emptied of school and kinder artwork, of Christmas cards and homemade decorations. Can you guess what happened?

 3. Find small pockets of time

Our drawing wall evolved day by day. Fifteen minutes here to fill in the grumpy time before dinner. Half an hour after lunch to settle us down. An hour on a hot day with books and paints and pens spread all over the table. Five minutes to quickly catch an idea. One evening I laid out paper and pens on the table, ready to start drawing before breakfast the next day. Sometimes I sat down with Tom and Annalise and drew with them, other times I left them to it.

4. Limit your materials - less is best!

To make it look more cohesive, we stuck to brown artist pens with cream, white or brown paper. We did add watercolour paints for some experimenting towards the end. We imitated Heide and used dressmaking pins to tack our art to the wall. I pinned our pictures to the wall every day, so we could admire our growing gallery.

5. Turn to books for inspiration

One of the most useful books we turned to was the 'Usborne art book - Big book of things to draw'. The suggestion for doodling was wonderful. I laid out a huge piece of paper from a cheap roll, splattered paint all over it, painted a few shapes, lines and squiggles and then we spent three rainy days on and off drawing around the table. I had forgotten how relaxing it is to NOT have an agenda, to NOT do something for the sake of being productive. It's so relaxing - you just sit and draw whatever you feel like. And the splodges and splatters do invite you to be more imaginative, more inventive, more creative.

We also followed the Usborne book for drawing city buildings and painting them with watercolour, and Annalise really enjoyed looking at Stephen Michael King's 'Leaf' and splashing green paint over her figures.

6. Themes are fun
Sometimes one of us would suggest a theme - animals, weather etc. I was inspired by Jean at Artful Parent and drew lots of different frames to fill in. (Jean has some amazing art ideas!)

7. Enjoy the gallery!

Once you have filled your wall, it is time for the launch - yes, with a glass of wine and a cheese platter! If you are lucky you may find a local artist to talk you through their work...

"Come over to play at the Childhood 101 We Play link up."