Sunday, August 15, 2010

Clowning Around

At the start of 2010, each person in our family requested one thing that they would like to do this year. My oldest (age 4) he said he wanted to go to the circus. My children have never been. In fact, I haven't been since I was about twelve years old. So this week, the circus is coming to town, and we've been reading books with a big top theme.


BOOKS: My children only know about the circus through books. One of our favorites is Oliver by Syd Hoff about such a lovable elephant who wants to dance in the circus. And then we also have Tightrope Poppy the High-Wire Pig by Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen in our home collection, which is about a little pig who tries and tries again to reach her goal. But in preparation for our trip to the circus this week, I wanted to read a few other books and found some at the library. Bearymore by Don Freeman is the tale of a sweet circus bear who stumbles upon a new act while trying to stay dry in a rainstorm. A few other circus books include Word Bird's Circus Surprise by Jane Belk Moncure,  Big-Top Circus by Neil Johnson and If I Ran the Circus by Dr. Seuss.

ACTIVITY: Hand Print Clowns
My kids like anything that involves tracing their hand prints. So I started by doing that on construction paper. I cut out the hand prints, red circles for noses, triangles for hats, two round circles for faces, and a few various other shapes. The boys just glued their clown faces together as they liked, using the hand print cut-outs as the clown hair. They finished things off with googly eyes and markers to decorate.

Now, we're just ready for our first outing to the circus!

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