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Virtual Book Club for Kids – Cuckoo by Lois Ehlert

 Cuckoo by Lois Ehlert inspired Art

It’s virtual Book Club for Kids time again and this time it’s Lois Ehlert as the Author of the month. We have looked through the variety of books and boy are there some really amazing ones and decided because we had spent the last week in Lanzarote and J is very interested in “What is something in Spanish?” that we would go for Cuckoo by Lois Ehlert – A Mexican Folk Tale as it has the story in English and in Spanish.

Cuckoo Cucu activities for the book

We read the book at our weekly book club meeting this afternoon – luckily my friend is a better Spanish speaker than me mine is very rusty and she read the story in Spanish and then I read the story in English. We then looked at the images in the book and talked about how they were made and started our activity of creating some Cuckoo inspired art work.

Cuckoo Inspired Artwork – Materials

Aluminum Foil
Pens and Pencils
Scissors
White Paper
Gummed Paper – for those outside of the UK here is it on Amazon.com

Cuckoo Inspired Art work – How to

virtual book club for kids

For the book club we started off with some metal art work. I cut up some aluminum foil into shapes from the book – Parrot, Tree, Flower and Star and then added a selection of different pens and pencils to decorate them with. Ball point pens and sharp pencils work best at making imprints on the foil.

virtual book club for kids

J, T and their friend A set about decorating their metal work with the pens – this has been asked for since and I will have to keep a supply of cut up shapes for J to draw on as he loves the effect that it gives on the other side of the foil as well.

using gummed paper

For our second activity I took inspiration again from the book and the different shapes that made up all of the animals in it as well as the bright vibrant colours. I recently brought some Gummed Paper Squares and decided these would be perfect – instead of using glue they work like old style stamps that you lick the back and it sticks to the paper (although a paint brush and some water work just as well) so I set about quickly cutting them up into Circles, zig zag shapes, petal shapes, rectangles, different sized squares as well as odd shapes that I made from the cut offs.

Mexican inspired artwork for preschoolers

They then set to creating some pictures with the shapes – J and T loved this – T especially the licking of the shapes – she became our official licker! J created 3 pictures from the different shapes – he had a lot of fun over lapping the shapes and creating unique pictures.

cuckoo by lois elhert inspired art work

Author
Cerys Parker

Cerys is a marine biologist, environmental educator, teacher, mum, and home educator from the UK. She loves getting creative, whether it is with simple and easy crafts and ideas, activities to make learning fun, or delicious recipes that you and your kids can cook together you'll find them all shared here on Rainy Day Mum.

11 Comments

  1. This is a great activity. I love all of Lois Ehlert’s books with all the bright colors!
    Lori

  2. Ah what fun.. And I keep getting distracted by your fabulous table cloth!!!

    Thanks for sharing on Kids Get Crafty!

    Maggy

  3. Love T’s smile. Great activity for little hands!

  4. I love the vibrant colors of the art. What a neat project. I just adore T’s dimple! Too cute!

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