Lois Ehlert Toddler Crafty

It’s been awhile since I’ve read any Lois Ehlert books, and I can just say, WOW! They’re awesome! I love her various illustration methods. They’re unique and eye catching—we spent a good amount of time just looking at them all.

Here are some of the Lois Ehlert books our library had available.

We decided to do crafts based on two of the books. First, Eating the Alphabet. We own this book and have been reading it for, well, 3 years. It’s helped us identify—and try!—lots of fruits and veggies when we go to the grocery store.

Toddler Train Man doesn’t get much opportunity to use scissors, so we went through recent grocery ads and cut out foods that we like (or that I want him to like!). TTM does better when we’re working together, so we both cut out pictures, but I gave him the right of approval on my choices before they were added to our pile. 

After we had a good collection, we did some discussing and sorting. We put foods into groups—fruits and veggies, meat, freezer foods, and so on. We also looked at colors and which foods we’ve eaten most recently.

Finally, we glued the pictures into a collage. I thought we’d group them based on our discussions, but TTM wasn’t so interested in that idea, so he started with big pictures, then medium, then small. I guess that’s a grouping, right?

Yes, that's a boat in the middle. It was in the ad and apparently VERY interesting!

We also did a Leaf Man activity since our yard has perfect crafting supplies. First we did a nature walk around our yard and collected interesting leaves, sticks, pinecones… As we collected we talked about what we might design with them. Well that was an easy question: what else would Toddler TRAIN Man want to make?!

We dumped our haul onto the driveway and TTM decided to use sticks to make the top and bottom of the train (it’s actually Big Boy for other train lovers out there). We filled in the middle with leaves; the small sticks are LOTS of steam stacks and smoke. Wheels were an easy one, and the lone dandelion we found made a perfect light.

This was a fun craft that will never be duplicated! After we finished, we talked about some of the other things we might try to make next time—trucks and other trains, of course. The added bonus: we started fall clean up! This will also be a great activity to keep TTM engaged while I do more raking in the future.

Which Lois Ehlert books are your favorites? What fun activities have you done with them?

Toddler Book Crafts

Toddler Train Man and I have been going to library story time since he was about 3 months old. Sure, it could be argued that since he slept through some of those early sessions it wasn’t so much about him, but fast forward a few years and he now loves going to the library.

Our story time typically has a theme with books, songs, and a craft to take home, but we don’t get to meet every week, so I’ve found some activities online and created some of my own to supplement our reading craftiness. I think adding a craft to a book makes it more memorable and more fun. It also gives us a great opportunity to practice skills like cutting, coloring, gluing, planning, and so much more. But don’t let on that we’re learning, ok?

Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons 

author Eric Litwin 

illustrator James Dean 

If you haven’t read any of the Pete the Cat books, you must! The books are also songs and those can easily be found online, but beware: the songs will stick in your head. For days. We changed the materials a little on this craft, using twisties instead of pipe cleaners with the buttons. We taped them on, and then they were easy to POP off as we retold the story. I think the same base could be used to get crafty with the other Pete books.

see the craft link here

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom 

authors Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault 

illustrator Lois Ehlert

I helped a lot with constructing the tree. Maybe I mostly made it, but Toddler Train Man twisted the branches the way he wanted them. We had purple “coconuts” (pom pom balls) that were good fun and once little man started taking letters up the coconut tree, there was no stopping him! He repeated words from the book and had fun attaching the letters in different ways. The C was especially exciting because it could hang over the branches. Awesome!

see the craft link here

This was an early picture--clearly more letters need to fill that tree!

Dinosaur Train author/illustrator John Steven Gurney

We used marshmallows (or marshMELONs for the little guy) and toothpicks to create a train. We only made an “engine,” (it was really just a cube with a cow catcher/triangle off the front) then used dinosaur stickers and a boy sticker to act out the book. We also had a little talk about “construction not consumption.” Apparently building makes a boy hungry, so what to do? Eat marshmelons, of course. The conversation was strikingly similar to a conversation I had with 5^th graders as we made sugar cube castles in connection to Castle in the Attic. Perhaps I need to think of non-food crafts???

I think the dinosaur is roaring.

Some books just beg to have a craft accompaniment, right? What kinds of book crafties have you done?