Making Our Own Country

Last week, a library book led us to explore a sculpture garden. This week, a library book led us to create our own countries. I Need My Own Country by Rick Walton is a fun little book about a girl who creates her own country to get away from her brother and mother after she feels she has been treated unfairly. She explains exactly what steps to take. Boogs loved this book and asked if he could follow the steps to create his own country. Of course!

Boogs read through the book several times (sneaky repeated readings) and wrote down what he needed to have to make his own country. Boogs' country's location was his room. He named his country Winter Island after his pet hamster, Winter.

 

The flag for Winter Island has a smiling Boogs in the center. The national animals and their favorite snacks are at the top of the flag - a hamster and a fish. There are sunflower seeds and fish food lined up behind the animals. We hung our flags on the doors to our countries.

The book said, "...there might be invasions. You will want to defend yourself." Boogs really had fun with the invasions. His stuffed animals were his citizens. They defended the country against my invading army of books. (My country was called Creatimagination and was located in my craft room.)  He used his citizen soldiers to knock down my book citizens. I threw pencils and shot rubber bands at his army. Boogs declared there would be two battles a day. This lasted about a week.

 

After each battle, we had to give out medals for bravery, sacrifice, honor, and  peace.

The book informed us that we needed to have national money. We spent an entire morning making money for our countries.

 We had fun working on projects for our countries.

One afternoon, I heard Boogs playing the same few notes over and over again on his keyboard. When I asked him about it, he said he was working on the tune for his national anthem. So cute! He is still trying to come up with the perfect pledge of allegiance.

I often make story themed lunches inspired by the books that we read. This is the lunch that matches Boogs' country. In his ELB lunchbox: Winter Island cheese quesadilla, broccoli for the island's trees, candied sunflower seeds for the national animal's snacks, blueberry water for the national sport of swimming, and rice & beans with a melted cheese hamster for the national animal.

This post is linked to:
After School Linky Party
Read Explore Learn
Link & Learn
It's Playtime

Be sure to check out the wonderful sites I link to on my sidebar! If you want to see more book inspired lunches, click on the "lunches" label at the end of this post or go to My Story Themed Lunches board on Pinterest. I would love for you to leave a comment to let me know you stopped by.

Umlauf Sculpture Garden

Boogs picked out a book at the library this week called The Naked Lady by Ian Wallace. It tells the story of a sculptor who moves in next door to Tom and his parents. Tom takes a "welcome neighbor" raspberry pie next door and sees a statue in the middle of a field. He gasped, "She's naked." The owner of the property informs Tom that she is not naked, she is nude. She is a piece of art. The artist has many other sculptures on his property of fruits, vegetables, and animals. The artist becomes a close friend to the family. Tom is so inspired by the artist's work that he eventually grows up to be an artist, too. The author, Ian Wallace, stated that this is his own story. He expressed his art by becoming an illustrator for children's books.

This book inspired me to take Boogs to a sculpture garden in our community. I made Boogs a story themed lunch for our adventure.  In his Laptop lunchbox: cheese statue on almond butter & jelly sandwich, berries for the berry pie they shared, taffy for sculpting and a salad with dressing.

Charles Umlauf was an artist, sculptor and teacher. He taught at the University of Texas in Austin for 40 years. In 1985, he donated his home, studio and 168 of his art pieces to the city of Austin. This was later turned into the Umlauf Sculpture Garden.

Boogs really enjoyed our exploration of Umlauf's work. I created a 12 picture scavenger sheet to take with us. Boogs searched for each of the statues, located their name and what material they were made of. Umlauf used bronze, cast stone, aluminum, African mohogany, stoneware, plaster, redwood, terra cotta, hydrastone, alabaster, marble, and Texas limestone. He sculpted animals, families, religious figures, mythological figures, and nudes. Umlauf Sculpture Garden is a small but wonderful place to explore. Even on a hot Texas afternoon, there was plenty of shade.

 Icarus was Boogs' favorite sculpture in the garden.

 

Boogs was very intrigued by the size of The Diver because he was exactly the same size as Boogs and he appeared to like swimming! Boogs decided that The Diver must also be 7-years-old.

 

 Same size feet.

 Same arm length.

Boogs noticed that The Poetess had bigger hands and smaller feet than I do. He said, "I think if she stood up she would fall right over because she is top heavy."

After we explored the entire grounds, I asked Boogs to choose his favorite sculpture to sketch. He chose Icarus. It was so sweet to watch him find the perfect shady spot to make his own art.

I asked Boogs to write a few sentences about why he picked Icarus as his favorite sculpture.

We brought along some taffy to use to make our own sculptures inspired by Umlauf's work. Boogs thought is was fun to sculpt with taffy. Especially since he was able to eat his creation. Here is my taffy sculpture of The Poetess.

Boogs told me he didn't think I would like his choice for his taffy sculpture inspiration. He asked, "Can I try to do a sculpture of the Reclining Nude? It is not because she is naked, she is nude like the book said, not naked. I just find that sculpture really interesting."

We had a fun afternoon together.

I linked this post to:
Highhill Education
Crafts a la mode
After School Linky
Lunchbox Dad: Throwback Thursday link up 




Be sure to check out the wonderful sites I link to on my sidebar! If you want to see more book inspired lunches, click on the "lunches" label at the end of this post or go to My Story Themed Lunches board on Pinterest. I would love for you to leave a comment to let me know you stopped by.

Crafty Playdate

Last year, my friend and I met each week for a fun learning playdate with our kiddos. Things got hectic, I went back to work, and the weekly get together stopped. We are on Spring Break this week, so we were able to get together again.

When we were at the library last week, Boogs chose to checkout several monster books. I asked him if he wanted to do some sort of monster craft this week to go with his book picks. He helped decide on a papier-mache monster project.

It was a busy couple of hours while the kiddos worked on their creations.
(I forgot to take my camera with us. All of the photos were taken on my iPhone and they are not very good.)

I checked out Papier-Mache for Kids by Sheila McGraw and Papier-Mache Project Book by Marion Elliot. We also read Go to Bed Monster! by Natasha Wing and My Monster Mama Loves Me So by Laura Leuck.

After looking through the books, the kids decided what kind of project they wanted to do. Big Sis and H decided to make 3-D creatures with E's help. Boogs and B decided to make masks. Our paste recipe: 1/2 c. flour, 1 c. very warm water, 2 TBL salt (to reduce molding); mix it altogether until their are no lumps.

I love seeing how engaged the kids were in this activity.

Boogs took his mask home to finish drying and then add another layer before painting it. I don't think we will see C and her kids again in the next couple of weeks, so everyone is going to complete their projects on their own. Boogs needs to let his dry, add another layer, and then paint on his monster details. I will post a picture of the final project when we finish it.

Painting Our Sculpture

We had to rearrange our schedule this week. Our learning playdate was moved from Wednesday to Friday. Last week, we went over a very short history of sculpture and then gave the kids a block of clay and let them do whatever they wanted with it. Here is what they created:

This week, we gave them a variety of paint colors and brushes.They put these items to good use.

Oops!

There were a few mishaps.

The finished pieces.

Next week, we are going to check out a newly opened "all-abilities" park.