Picture Books and Crafts: Backyard Bugs & Fingerprint Bugs

I started a series last year called "Preschool Picture Books and Art", but I wanted to start it back up again. I renamed it Picture Books and Crafts since Zeke is no longer in preschool, and our projects are more crafty than artsy. 

We started this cold, rainy weekend with a book from one of our favorite series, "Hello World!" 

Backyard Bugs is a fun board book with simple text and more details for older kids who want them. We read through the book and then went through page by page and made a page full of fingerprint insects!

Zeke did this entire project by himself! I did have a sheet where I would demonstrate what to do, and then he did it on his own. Here is a close-up and description of each bug that we created.

Worm - Zeke used his entire finger for a worm-print. He used yellow ink like in the book and added orange stripes with a marker. We didn't add any eyes since there were none in the book.

Caterpillar - Again Zeke used an entire finger print with yellow ink. He added feet, antenna, and stripes.

Butterfly - Zeke used four orange finger prints for wings, and then added antennae and decorated the wings with a black marker.

Ant - Zeke used brown ink and three finger prints. Then he drew six legs, two antenna, and two eyes.

Ladybug - Zeke made a red thumbprint and then added black dots, antenna, and six legs. 

Cricket - Zeke used brown ink and added legs and antenna.

Grasshopper - Zeke used green ink and made a long body. Then he used a black marker to make legs and antenna.

Spider - Zeke used brown ink for the spider's body and then added eight legs and a mouth.

Dragonfly - Zeke used two pink finger prints and then added four wings with a black marker.

Bumble Bee - Zeke used a yellow finger print, then he drew black stripes, wings, and a head.

This was such a fun little project, and Zeke thought his fingerprint bugs turned out so cute! You could do this with any book on bugs, but the cartoon illustrations made it easier for Zeke to visualize how his bugs should look. 

Have you done this before? Click the image below to see our other projects!

Preschool Picture Books & Art: Swirl by Swirl and Spiral Snail Craft

This is one of my favorite picture books because the illustrations are absolutely stunning. It's a great introduction to spirals for preschoolers as well as a wonderful nature study book. All of the spirals in the book are from nature! I also love paper plate crafts (as you may be able to tell!). We did this snail in two different ways.

Swirl by Swirl by Joyce Sidman

First, I showed Zeke how to draw a spiral on a paper plate (the snail's shell) using a white crayon. He drew one on his plate. Make sure to press down hard with the crayon - Zeke didn't press down hard enough so his wound up not showing through.

Next, I thinned out some washable paint with water. I used this egg carton because it was the perfect size. Zeke painted both paper plates. The spiral showed through the paint really well on my plate because I pressed down hard with the white crayon. It wasn't very visible on Zeke's plate because he didn't press down very hard.

I cut out two snail's bodies and glued them to the back of the paper plate. Zeke added these jumbo googly eyes (which I think are so much fun!). I twisted the ends of a pipe cleaner into a spiral and taped that to the back of the snail's head.

On the snail where the spiral didn't show up, I drew a spiral outline of glue and Zeke helped me to place the twine on the glue spiral. This snail also turned out really cute! 

Have you read this book? There are so many fun spiral activities that we could "spin" off of this book!

Check out the other posts in this series:

Birds and Feather Painting

A Tree is Nice and Cork Tree Painting

The Mixed-Up Chameleon and Paper Plate Color Changing Chameleon

The Fuzzy Duckling and Handprint Duck

Preschool Picture Books & Art: The Fuzzy Duckling & Handprint Duck

The Fuzzy Duckling is such a cute and classic Golden Book about a duckling taking a walk through the barnyard, counting the various animals as he sees them. I wanted to make a cute painted handprint duck, but Zeke was very much against painting his hand so we opted for this way instead! It turned out really cute and was so simple.

First I traced his hand on a sheet of yellow paper. I made him keep his four fingers together to form the backend of the duck with feathers and his thumb straight up for the neck and head. Then I cut it out for him.

Next I had him paint a paper plate "pond" blue. 

While the paint was still wet, he stuck the duck on the pond. Then I put a dot of glue for him to stick the googly eye on the head.

Then I drew three lines and he placed three yellow feathers on the body of the duck. I cut a small orange rectangle and stuck it on the head for a beak. I think this turned out really cute! 

Check out the other books and arts and crafts in this series:

Birds and Feather Painting

A Tree is Nice and Cork Tree Painting

The Mixed-Up Chameleon and Paper Plate Color Changing Chameleon

Preschool Picture Books & Art - The Mixed Up Chameleon & Paper Plate Craft

This is one of our favorite Eric Carle books, but honestly they're all so fun to read! I saw this paper plate color-changing chameleon craft and I knew we had to recreate it.

You need two paper plates, a paper fastener, paint, and a print out of a chameleon to trace. I simply searched for and found a basic chameleon coloring page and made it smaller when I printed it.

I had Zeke paint the paper plate (he actually painted two because he was enjoying it so much) with several different colors. He went all out and painted the entire plate - no white space left!

While he was painting, I was tracing the chameleon onto another paper plate. Then I cut the chameleon shape out using scissors. It would probably have been easier to use an Exacto knife, but I didn't have one. This was the hardest part of this activity, and it's not perfect! I left a little place to glue a googly eye on the chameleon!

We waited until the next morning to attach the white paper plate with the cut-out chameleon onto the painted paper plate. Then Zeke glued on a googly eye. When we spin the top plate around, the chameleon changes colors! 

This was a fun craft to do and a great go-along for the book The Mixed Up Chameleon. 

Check out the other posts in this series!

Birds and Feather Painting

A Tree is Nice and Cork Tree Painting

Preschool Picture Book and Art - A Tree is Nice and Cork Tree Painting

This week I decided to read one of our less-read books on Zeke's shelf - A Tree is Nice by Janice May Udry. There is nothing wrong with this book; in fact, it's a wonderful and beautiful picture book about why trees are so fantastic. I really don't know why we don't read it more often!

I decided a simple art project would be painting or stamping with cork. We had cork leftover from our study on Ferdinand with Titus a few years ago. I think I got the cork pieces from Hobby Lobby for a couple of bucks. 

I drew a simple tree outline on brown paper and gave Zeke the cork pieces with some green paint on a piece of discarded cardboard. 

He really had fun stamping the cork to make leaves all over the tree! It doubled as a fine motor activity because he was using his pincher grasp to hold the cork and using his finger, hand, and wrist muscles to stamp the paint on the tree outline over and over again.

This would be a beautiful craft to do for a fall tree with red, orange, and yellow paint. It was simple and took less than ten minutes to set up, complete, and clean up from. 

Check out Zeke's feather painting from the book Birds by Keven Henkles last week! 

Preschool Picture Book & Art - Birds and Feather Painting

I'm starting a new series on my blog called Preschool Picture Books & Art. Each week I'm going to do a craft with Zeke based on picture books. I know this isn't a unique series, but I do want to do some fun activities with him over the summer, especially before the baby comes in September/October! 

This week our book is Birds by Kevin Henkles. This is actually one of my favorite picture books of all time. I would definitely consider this a true living book under Charlotte Mason's definitions. It presents factual information in such a fun and beautiful way. Zeke loves to be read this book. 

I even did a week-long study on this book with him when he was not even two. The study is in my Etsy shop as a digital download if you're interested! 

The page in the book that inspired this painting activity was this one:

"If birds made marks with their tail feathers when they flew, think what the sky would look like."

I took four feathers (just the first four colors I grabbed from our bag) and matching paint. We talked about how the feathers could have made streaks and squiggles in the sky. Then I showed him to how to take the feathers, dip them in the matching paint, and make lines in the sky. 

At first he was making lines and streaks on his paper. Then he decided to paint 'water' with the purple. 

Next he added a yellow rainbow above the water.

Then he put some orange fish by the water.

Next he added green birds to the sky.

It wasn't exactly how I pictured the final product, but I was so proud of his creativity! He loved every minute of it. I enjoyed listening to his narrations of what he was painting with each color. I didn't prompt him or give him suggestions. Plus - it's always fun to paint with something other than a paintbrush!

Have you read this book?