Trick-or-Treat!

Halloween 2012

Scratch Art

In my previous post I wrote about how much my children enjoyed the book Seven Loaves of Bread. One thing that makes the book so great are the scratchboard illustrations. Last week we decided to make some scratchboard art of our own. It's very easy to do!

First, gather your supplies. There are a few different ways to do this. Experimenting with new techniques is one of the funnest things about creating art. Here are two that we experimented with:

Supply List #1: white cardstock paper, crayons, black paint, liquid soap and toothpicks.
Supply List #2: white cardstock paper, markers, black crayons, toothpicks

The consensus was that coloring the cardstock with marker made for a brighter picture in the end. The black paint was easier to apply than the black crayon, but the black crayon was easier to scratch off. So... mix and match and find the way that works the best for you! Or come up with a new way to do it!

Now on to the next step:

Have the children color in the white cardstock paper completely with crayon (or marker). They can color it however they like, using as many colors as they wish! Just make sure they press hard with the crayon and that no white space is showing.

Next, pour a few drops of liquid soap into a dish of black paint. (This will help the paint stick to the crayon.) Paint the entire paper black. Set aside to dry.  Or color over the entire sheet of cardstock with a black crayon. Press hard to make sure it goes on thick and that the entire sheet is black.

Once the black paint is completely dry (or the paper is completely covered in black crayon), give each child a toothpick. They will use that to scratch out a picture.

 

Seven Loaves of Bread

Any mother of small children has certain books memorized because of repeat readings. Sometimes it makes one want to pull their hair out, and other times a mother is delightfully happy to read that book for the fifth time today, because, well, she likes it too. Seven Loaves of Bread by Ferida Wolf is one of those books.

Milly and Rose are sisters who live on a farm. Milly does all the baking, and Rose often wonders why she makes seven loaves of bread everyday. It seems like so much work. Milly answers, "Seven is as easy as one," and continues her work. Each loaf of bread is designated to a person or animal on the farm. When Milly gets sick Rose takes over the baking and decides seven loaves are too many and starts cutting corners. Unsurprisingly, Rose quickly learns that cutting corners only creates more work. By the end of the story Rose, "who only worked as hard as she had to," learned that seven is indeed as easy as one! The scratch board style illustrations are charming and go so well with the story.

"Seven is as easy as one." has become a catch phrase on our house. Our only copy is from the library and we have renewed it three times already! My four and six-year-olds especially love this story, I think partly because of the repetition and cadence of the tale. It certainly is worth reading at least once!