Do you read Rhythm of the home? If not, you should. It is such a wonderful online magazine (and they have a blog too! And a Facebook!) that comes out once a quarter. It is chalked full of fun ideas for raising children naturally. There are book referrals, recipes, toy reviews and basically anything else one would want to look at.
This year I happened to have found a little tree for 1.00 at Target. I bought it thinking of our nature table and while I wasn't sure exactly what I would use it for I knew it would be something amazing. Not two days later the new edition of the magazine came out and on there they had a wonderful tutorial on making books from recycled paper and how to create a "poet tree". Her tutorial used real branch pieces, but since I already had the tree from target I thought it was a match made in heaven.
Today I finally sat down with the kids and folded and cut dozens of books. They picked out one spring poem from a few that I had found from our children's poetry books and each gave me input on to how to color the pages, "to make them exciting to look at" (Sam) and then they each drew their own books and I helped write the words.
I am so impressed by their creativity. Joe's especially since he is always overflowing in creativity. His books are so adorable!
Sam wrote his book himself. It is a book about he and my Dad. Page one sports my Dad and Sam holding hands, page two his heart with my Dad's name in it and page three held his words. "Sam loves Papa. Papa loves Sam." He even put in the periods. By himself!
Molly's book was a colorful thing. She kept saying she was drawing "rainbow babies" but it was mostly scribbling. I was trying to encourage her to actually draw but then I listened to myself and realized I should just let her do whatever she wanted. She CAN draw people and babies and draws them a lot. I guess she just felt like scribbling. And that's okay too because it is after all... poetry from her heart. :) And I didn't not take a picture because I disapproved, I swear.
Sam and Joe both agreed the poem we borrowed would be from Robert Louise Stephens entitled, "Rain" since as they put it, "It rains so VERY much in the spring!" (Joe) and so we wrote in the poem in different colors and the kids each took a minute and interpreted the poem as they saw fit and told me what to draw. I asked them to draw what they were seeing only they were completely against that idea. "Well, I can't draw a TREE!!" Joe said and so I was stuck drawing for two hours though I had meant to work on a water painting I have started.
Alas, since I am such a very terrible artist I will only share two pages. The one Joe chose and the one Molly chose.
Tomorrow, I think if it is raining (which... uh, when is it not?) then we shall go stomp puddles in our muck boots.
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