StART: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

"StART" is the brain child of Michelle at A Mommy's Adventures. She encourages you to read a story to your child and then do an art project of your choice, based on the book you have read. I just love the idea and think it's such a good one, because what can be simpler than taking a great book as inspiration for an art project. You may be thinking that arts-and-crafts are just not your thing, but the truth of the matter is that most children would be happy to simply draw a picture about a book they have read, especially if they know that Mom is a participant of sorts in the event. Without me ever formally introducing this idea, my older son has done many StART projects spontaneously. He is often inspired by a book and comes up with wonderful ideas. I will definitely be sharing some of his creations with you in future posts.

Another fun part of StART is that after you have completed your art project, you can  link up to Michelle's blog (that is if you have a blog of your own) and share your ideas with other blogging Moms. So we are joining the fun and have decided to use " The Very Hungry Caterpillar" as our first book inspired art project.

Both boys thoroughly enjoyed the story. I love that my Big One is not too big to enjoy stories like these. For our art project we found these super cute craft packs from Play2Learn. My lovely friend Grietjie is a consultant for these terrific products and you can email her at joyfulmama@telkomsa.net  if you would like to purchase some. They cost only R20 and you can make two caterpillars/worms from each packet.

These were so easy to make. All you need is some thin wire, foam circles, beads and some eyes. The wire easily pierces the foam and the only tricky part was gluing the face on.

I really love this book. It teaches children about the life cycle of the butterfly, the days of the week, counting and about healthy eating. It also has die-cut pages which allows for some interactive fun. I went and checked out Eric Carle's website and blog and was surprised to discover that the book celebrated it's fortieth anniversary last year. Eric Carle also shares that his illustrations are collages, made from his own hand-painted tissue paper. I must say that I am inspired to do some tissue paper art after reading about this. If you would like to read up more about Eric Carle, you will find his website here and his blog here. Enjoy!

I hope that this has encouraged you to do a book and art project this week.  If you are looking for some more ideas, pop over to A Mommy's Adventures and have a look at all the StART posts.  I will also be sharing many more of these with you in future posts.

PS. I linked this to Making the World Cuter Monday